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Archive for May 2nd, 2007

Crime doesn’t pay

May 2nd, 2007 2 comments

While we were watching LOST tonight, someone knocked on our door. It was our neighbor – and he was standing there with our lawnmower. Apparently he’d been washing dishes and looked out the window to notice that our shed door was open. He went outside and saw a guy dragging our lawnmower up the sidewalk. At 10:15 at night. No, that’s not conspicuous.

Our neighbor, a guy who loves his yard and has surely noticed what our mower looks like, yelled at him that that was our mower. He let it go and started jogging away, saying that he (our neighbor) could give it back to us. Which he did.

Thank God our neighbor was doing the dishes. He’s a good guy, and a good neighbor, even if his lawn does outshine ours by a factor of about a thousand. I imagine us not being able to mow our lawn because the mower was gone would make him nearly as crazy as it would us.

There was no lock on the shed door. The entire assembly which held the lock was broken off by thieves who made off with our weedeater a while back. Needless to say, we’ll be replacing it with a sturdy chain and keyed lock as soon as possible. I doubt the thieves will be back tonight, but until tomorrow, the mower stays inside. Tomorrow, we start beefing up security.

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If it’s in print, it must be true!

May 2nd, 2007 4 comments

Or not.

The Creative Loafing article came out, and yes, I am in it. The woman who interviewed me admitted that she usually copy edits, so she was fairly new to this whole interviewing thing. I mentioned this later to my mother, longtime newspaper editor, and she asked, “Did she ask you how to spell your name?” I said no, and she shook her head disapprovingly. I answered, “You’re right, she should have, but it’s ‘Heather Hill.’ Surely she’ll get that right.”

Well, she did. But…

Another “comic addict” and longtime Heroes customer, Heather Hill “started [reading comics] in 1977 — the year Star Wars came out,” she laughs. Hill is a freelance writer for the online role playing game Dragon Realm and mother to 8-year-old Emily.

Dragon Realm? Dragon Realm? It’s DragonRealms. One word, plural. If anyone wanted to Google it based on that article, they’d be out of luck. I don’t go around calling Creative Loafing “Crate of Loathing.” If you’re not sure of what you heard, ASK.

I mentioned later in the interview with her that actually, I started reading earlier – my cousins and I read Richie Rich and other Harvey comics in the car trip up to Pennsylvania every year. That’s not as good of a hook, so I won’t quibble.

At one point during the discussion, she asked what I got out of comics, and I said that different people get different things based on where they are in their lives. For instance, right now Supergirl is doing a storyline – ‘don’t let your boyfriend hit you, no means no,’ that sort of thing. It doesn’t speak to me at all, because I already know these things. But I still remember a Wonder Woman comic when I was in high school that dealt with teen suicide. At that point in my life, it was more relevant to a teen girl. The things I read now speak to me more where I am in my life today.

What did I not say?

That’s what a good story does, whatever the medium. It becomes a part of you, woven into your past to remind who you were. “I’ve hung on to an issue of Wonder Woman that dealt with teen suicide for years now,” Heather says lightly.

For the record, I WAS NEVER SUICIDAL AS A TEEN. It never crossed my mind. This sounds to me as if this issue of Wonder Woman was some sort of magical talisman that guided me through a turbulent youth. I remember it because I thought it was interesting that a comic was trying to tackle such a serious issue. I didn’t exactly clutch it to my breast, weeping, “This is me!”

George Perez was doing the book back then. I enjoyed that run, and enjoyed Jill Thompson’s run, too, for that matter, since they didn’t draw her like she was constantly bending over for a good poling. Pardon my French. I actually had to stop reading the book for a while because she and her Amazon cohorts were clearly having some sort of mystical laundry problems that caused their uniforms to shrink and give them all wedgies.

I admit I’m probably overreacting a bit to the quote, and after I read it again I’ll see it differently. I did give her that awesome “hobble in my walker” quote, because baby, I know what the media wants in a sound bite. I’ll have to read it again later, preferably when I’m not hopped up on my Wednesday night raspberry mocha. Regardless, I will be speaking with the interviewer, if only to remind her of the importance of confirming your facts (Dragon Realm indeed). As my newshound mom says, “If your mother says she loves you, check it out!”

, I believe your title is safe.

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I be smart.

May 2nd, 2007 6 comments

Cribbed from .

Mingle2 Free Online Dating - Science Quiz

It was that meteor/meteoroid thing that got me. D’oh!

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Make it so!

May 2nd, 2007 2 comments

In yesterday’s entry, I neglected to add that you, too, can have your very own Picard head! The trick is, you have to know where to look. This is from eBay seller donnyaol.com. Nowhere in the description of the item does he mention that the head is a dead ringer for Patrick Stewart. It’s quite mysterious. Does he know? How can he not? Because of this, entering any search terms you might normally use wouldn’t bring this up. I found it back in 2004 when I was looking for a mannequin head to display my hats, but I couldn’t justify the price. I saw it again a few weeks ago while looking for a dressform.

It looks like donnyaol.com has a supply of them, because this wasn’t the only one I saw. Also, there’s one that looks uncannily like a bald Jim Carrey (at least to me) and another one that somewhat resembles Tyrone Powers. WTF? Where is he getting these? Who has a continuous supply of Picard heads?

Last week we installed a new ceiling fan. The old one had three non-working light sockets and was a little out of balance. Plus it was white with gold trim, and the gold was peeling off from the heat of the bulbs. Time for a change. So my wonderful husband, all 6’2″ of him, crawled into the attic and across the rafters to install it. He did a great job, and while the fan might be a little too fancy for the room – I’m torn on this – it’s better than what was there before. More to the point, now I can use it with my Picard head for this classic tableau:



There are FOUR LIGHTS!

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