The picture says it all

Words fail me. But if you can come up with the perfect caption, you'll be well rewarded in the first-ever Miscellany giveaway. So comment away and see what delights await. Here's a hint: Gift certificate to Amazon.com.
-- Lo

Whaddya know?

Today I feel a little like the paranoid guy who figured out that everyone really WAS out to get him.
For at least three years, I've said I'm a little off my game. Not breathing right. Exhausted. And all the allergy meds, antibiotics for sinus infection and miscellaneous other attempts to get ahead of it have done nothing.
Turns out that task belonged to a strong-stomached surgeon willing to put a variety of creepy little tools in my nose and pull out entire walls of tissue that were completely blocking six out of eight sinus cavities.
Bless him, he even provided me with a stunning little DVD that documents the mess. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down that wall. He held one particularly lovely piece of tissue against the base of my nose so that I could see it was bigger than my nose.
So today, I'm miserable because there's a lot of swelling. But even with the swelling, more air is getting through. And I know that I'm just a few days away from feeling better than I have in years.
I'm also being watched over by my 23-year-old buddy, Oscar. Me and my shadow.

Dude, this both sucks and blows

Unfortunately, it's not my nose. These days, that marvelous orifice of aromatic attraction does neither. That baby is clogged.
Next Wednesday, though, it's going to be a different matter entirely. I'm having a nasty little outpatient procedure at Intermountain Medical Center whereby a nice white coat will clip some scar tissue and polyps and flush out what are supposed to resemble donut holes (empty) and instead look like a toxic bog.
They assure me it will hurt like hell. And I can hardly wait.
Increasingly, I feel like I'm wading through marshmallow cream, bogged down in slime and muck so thick I cannot think. I am slow and sluggish and want nothing so much as a good nap.
That's apparently the result of the sludge in my head.
When it's gone, I'm gonna find Me again.
Whoohoo!
Bring it!

The Creepiest Thing About Coraline

Was the guy sitting next to Aly. We're hunkered in the dark, watching this odd little animated film about the girl who longs for attention but can only get it by trading in her eyes for a pair of buttons. And the guy next to Aly (also known as Burt, Bertie and Albert) absent-mindedly wipes his hands on her legs to get rid of the popcorn grease.
Seriously. Weird. And. Creepy.
I didn't get the impression he was a perv. Just an idiot. I know I certainly have trouble telling my own leg from someone else's. But I think he's one of those slobs who just wipes their hands on the furniture and thought Al was the seat next door.
Had he done it a third time, though, I was winding up to clock him -- because I was getting ticked off, if you'll excuse the pun.

Pushin' It

Jake and Burt, as I'm fond of calling my daughters, decided a few weeks ago to enter the Cesar Chavez poster contest in the Salt Lake School District. While they plotted their designs, I was roped in to get them poster paper, which had to be a specific size, and round up magazines I'm done with so they can cut them up. It took me a few days to get the message to my brain at a time when I could accomplish it, but I did get it done.
They both worked hard for one evening, then Jake got bored with the process, announced there was no way she could win such a highly competitive process, and stopped trying. Burt, as usual, tinkered a bit more, then started procrastinating but announced she was going to finish. When she says that, she does it. Much of her effort consisted of staring at a photo of Chavez she found on the Web. After looking at him for about 20 hours, she freehanded her version of him. Then she set it aside until a couple of days before it was due.
When she tackled the project hard, her primary task seemed to be cutting out pieces of the magazines that were ether black or blue. I couldn't figure out what she was doing, but it clearly involved a lot of little bits of paper and a ton or so of glue.
I was off the day the project was due (remember the painting fiasco?). Friday's a short day, so Burt was home early to tackle her project. And she did. I went about my business, occasionally reminding her she was running out of time.
It was due at 5 p.m. in the downtown district office. At 4:35, she declared it finished. I couldn't believe it when I looked at it. It really was an amazing effort -- hair and shirt were collage, face pastel chalks, background some of the paint from my wall. Mixed mediums indeed.
Still, we had to get it there and that would prove daunting. We had to route ourselves around a car accident and slowdown. Then, a half mile from our destination, I got stuck behind a horse-drawn carriage. Normally I love those, but not that day. We were on a mission and it felt like the meteor was about to hit planet earth.
I veered down a side street and found -- ah, hell -- a series of no-left turn signs. I swear the digital clock was ticking loudly. The ride had taken a decidedly desperate turn. We were not going to make it.
I started coaching them on the emergency plan: When I get to the district office, you girls get out and run inside. Maybe you can get in before they lock the outside door. Then well try to talk them into taking it.
In fact, we pulled up at 5 p.m., straight up. They rushed inside and I went in search of a parking spot. All I could do was hope... When I got there, they'd found the right room and made the deadline with no time to spare.
Today, the school announced that Burt's effort took second place in the district. Whoohoo.
Here's her take on Cesar Chavez....

My "Modrian" masterpiece

By popular demand, here's my wall painting masterpiece (see Skippin', below). Now that you can see the painted wall, you can kind of picture the painted carpet.:)

Skippin'

Took a week off because I had too much vacation time and, as always, a ton to do. The first couple of days, I mostly hung out with Beaux. But today I decided I'd better hit it. I didn't mean it literally.
I'm in the process of painting one wall of the living room with these cool glazed overlapping rectangles that I saw in a book. Simple task, a single wall. But it's the one that's open at the top, dividing the kitchen and living room. That's where the lanterns normally hang out.
I pulled them off and pulled myself up to the 8-foot-above the ground ledge, where I happily painted for a half hour before a little voice below me said "where are you?"
Beaux's next question was a good one. "How you getting down?"
Woops. Monkey me can climb, but you can't exactly dangle from a freshly painted ledge.
While he got the ladder I should have used to begin with, I carefully put the lid back on the can of paint. No reason to risk spilling a drop ----
--- when you can trip on a chair leg and -- holy crap -- heave the whole thing at the wall you're not painting and the entire expanse of carpet that lies between.
Besides wall and carpet, I also thoroughly soaked with robins-egg blue paint a bench that contains coat hooks and a compartment where the girls (I now know) hid a bunch of (seriously soaked) notebooks. I'd scooped up a boat load of paint (who knew a quart can hold a gallon; spilling must expand it) and positioned plastic underneath to catch what came pouring out the bottom.
Then I spent a couple of hours shampooing carpet (that was going to be Friday's big play date)
Okay, disaster resolved.
Next up, I went to move the bench a little. AnD THE DAMNED THING COLLAPSED.
Now, by this point, I didn't even flinch. Just walked in the kitchen, washed my hands and sat down with a cup of coffee to play Sudoku.
I still have two days off.

P.S. At 11 p.m., I remembered I was supposed to go to a friend's daughter's wedding reception. Ah, hell. Back to sudoku for me.