these days of leiderhosen

Alaska Airlines just sent me an e-mail asking for my great travel stories involving their Airlines. Instantly recalling the recent horror of air travel, I dropped what I was doing and have submitted the following. "In the last decade I have witnessed the decline of quality of service and customer support of Alaska Airlines, many times causing extreme personal distress and hefty unexpected expense during travel. I have found many employees of AA who ought to be providing service unwilling to assist, despite their capacity to do so. Flights are late more often than not and are miserably uncomfortable for all involved. This email asking for the gushing positive stories comes as quite a surprise, as my acquaintances and I seem to agree that flight travel has joined the same circle of hell as root canals and tax audits. Why doesn’t AK Air show even some slight effort to improve before begging to be patted on the head publicly?" I fully expect to be upgraded to an overhead bin on m...

Happy Birthday, Cervantes ! In today's Writer's Almanac Garrison devoted all of his ready today's history to him, like he does every year. And every year it sounds new and amazing. What a life. The lovely Garrison threw in a nice poem as well. Gray's First Sober Year" by William Notter. Listen to it, if you get the chance.

The S atorialist blog achieves style.com notice, finally. Love, love love him. And want his gig. And I don't have enough yarn, apparently so The Loopy Ewe might come in handy, eh? Must remember for later: the hand- spun, hand-dyed Art Yarn webring . I mean, really. How good is that? WTFMFWTFAYT SONG!

Ooooo. Want. Want. Want. Screw all feminist objections! Bella Pamela Aprons . AND if I get a niece in February (or a nephew, although it might cause Dah to have a stroke) they make child sizes. Hurrah! Crap. I've been pegged for Jury Duty in September. Ah well, I need more knitting time (can it be only three months till christmas? Impossible.) Am attempting toe up socks as it is beginning to get quite cold here at night. Opal sock yarn is perfectly hideous in the ball, but the stuff wears and launders like iron. Cheers & Kisses to you.

My office mate Nancy is such a soft touch people bring their dogs by for an hour or two at a time while they have meetings. Today I spent two hours with a sleepy five week old dauschaund tucked into my sweater on my lap. Awwwww. The sweet puppy smell was dizzying.

Fabulous weekend on the California Coast (between Mendocino and Elk), here are the pictures. http://www.stevengrant.com/hhgetaway/index.htm (use the orange arrow to scroll through). I know the picture of cat signage is terribly illegible and I am truly sorry as it is the only object I ever considered nicking from a hotel room. More on this little adventure later. Thousand glittery hummingbirds of various sizes of in militant formation. Kisses.

I was lucky enough to spend most of the day with my two absolutely favorite muses: Roberta and Scott. Scott is freshly back from the Amazon where he did not feed any high school students to any pirahnas. No, he did not. He did, however, learn to cook for twenty-five people. That damned annoying thing inside my wee little brain that does not allow me wantonly litter or kick the occasional puppy also does not permit me to tell this beloved Muse that this could be one of the more useful things to know in life. Fortunately, Scott is not stupid and rarely requires my brain to function. I like that Scott always attempts to be entertaining and still maintains a flexibility as far as other peoples desires. I like that he is not too tall, not cruel in the slightest, and that he thinks the Brazilian goal keeper is almost as good looking as the Italian. He has excellent taste in sparkly, lovely Sarahs. I like his wavy, magic hair, especially when it's very clean. I like that he likes showers ...