Hello!

Remember me? The owner of this here blog? Need a moment to dig around in your memory cells? Is there such a thing as memory cells? Maybe not unless you’re a computer… Need a moment to dig around in your computers memory cells?

So I have moved. It’s not the first time. But it is the first time that I got to hawl my crap across an ocean. I decided to do the whole moving-thing in stages, so not to totally traumatize poor Mr Chooch with my girlyness. Men can be fragile, you know.

Stage 1, Potted plants:

Nearly completed, actually. Cause us girls, we know that windows are supposed to be pretty. And not be used as storage units. It’s the same reason why we put on mascara. Slowly but surely, over the past few weeks, I have been sticking potted plants into the windows and onto any flat (or just flatish) surface, until the clutter simply had to move because there was no room for it anymore. Clever, eh? I have also been awarded the nickname ”plant-monster”. I may make myself a badge.

Stage 2, Picture-frenzy:

Why don’t men hang pictures on the walls? Of all my male friends who have never been hitched (or had an overly domineering mother), there’s only two who have pictures on the walls. And they’re all of cars… Nudie calendars don’t count. Mr Chooch owned paintings. They were lined up along the walls. Loads of wallspace left, though.

And that’s as far as I’ve gotten. I’ve been slowed down by a bug. I am a sicky. My nose is all clogged up and my throat is trying to kill me off. Did you know that vomit can come out of your nose? I had no idea until just the other day. The things you learn… Overshare? Well, maybe.

Have another song:

I thought I saw a pussycat

Last night was fairly… interesting. I’d left my bedroom window open the night before, because I like oxygen when I sleep. But then I decided to go close it before I went to bed, because I’d rather not wake up to discover that my tits have turned into ice cubes.
So up the winding stairs I went, treading very carefully. You see, they’re kinda dark, and I almost kill myself on them yearly, on average. Since I’ve now reached mid-November without injury, I figure that my number is probably coming up.

In my room, I shifted the mosquito net (I also leave Christmas decorations out until August) a bit to the side, and pulled the window closed. Just as I was doing this, something black and far too big to be a mouse shot out from under the bed and out the door.

“I thought I saw a pussycat,” I thought.

Seconds later, a large screech, followed by a great deal of hysterical barking, could be heard from the living-room.

“I did. I did see a pussycat,” I thought.

As I entered the hallway, there was more screeching, barking and general madness. The neighbour’s cat sat on top of my piano, balancing on a gigantic stack of sheetmusic, while my dog, trying to get at the cat, clambered away at the keys, both of them screaming at each other like maniacs. It sounded a bit like the choir they had at my elementary school. Apparently, the animal had climbed up the tree outside my window and made it's way through the window.

It was obvious that the relatively large cat on top of a stack of papers, would eventually be defeated by gravity. It needed a way out. Preferably a way that didn’t go through the dog’s digestive system. So I opened the veranda door, and the cat blasted through it like a bullet, sending sheetmusic flying in all directions. Unfortunately, so did the dog.

I didn’t want the dog to eat our neighbour’s cat. I actually think there’s a law against letting your dog do stuff like that. Neither did I want it to stand outside, late at night, barking its head off. So I did the only thing I could have done – I sat down by the piano and played the “Maple Leaf Rag”.

You see, my dog has a very strange reaction to that particular piece of music. It’s kinda like Roger Rabbit and the old “shave and a haircut” trick. Whenever she hears it, she has got to stand by the piano and howl. This need far outweighs the need to devour passing felines.

Sure enough, the dog came bolting through the door and started to wail. By the time she remembered her cat-sized snack, the door was closed.

After all – you can put a cat in the oven, but that doesn’t make it a biscuit. Or something along those lines.

Piano

Okay, I'm trying to embed a great video here, but it only seems to work in the preview. So, if you can't see it, try this link:

http://video.yahoo.com/video/play?vid=7bdb323664c4979c78f41f4d39588d06.665845&cache=1&fr=fpman-link4

My addiction

I'm a total music junkie. My mp3 player is only a little over a year old, and it's already showing signs of stress. Not quite the kind of stress that’ll kill it, but no doubt it’s working on it. I have worn out so many stereos, walkmans and disc players over the years, I lost count ages ago. I’m guessing it’s an addiction that’s developed from growing up in a family with lots of musicians. Maybe it’s genetic, I dunno. Even if it isn’t, the never ending jam sessions that always follow when family members visit or going with your mum to various musical gigs as a kid, will get you in the end.

So, obviously, when one of my earplugs stopped working the other day, it was a total crisis. Kinda like Enron, only much, much bigger (my little universe is very important to me and operating on a parallel level from the rest of the world). I needed new ones. Fast. I could feel the withdrawal getting stronger with every passing second. The world with actual sounds in it, rather than music, is a weird place. And kinda annoying, really.

I rushed straight into town, where I bought myself a new pair of earplugs. With a feeling of tremendous relief, I ripped them out of their plastic cocoon and plugged them into my mp3 player. I pressed play, expecting to hear David Bowie singing in my ears. But Bowie didn’t sing. In fact, he barely whispered. Even turning the volume all the way up, couldn’t encourage him up to speaking level.

Pissed off, I was. I mean, if you gave Richard Burton a glass of iced tea and called it booze, he’d probably kick your ass. And that’s what I felt like doing to whoever created this piece of doo-doo (or however you spell that). The only other pair they had, cost 25 bucks and looked like something out of a sci-fi movie. But, being fairly desperate, I got them.

I opened the package carefully this time. The happy feeling kept itself at bay for now. I plugged them in, just like the last time. Then I forgot all about turning the volume all the way up, and nearly made my head explode…

So I’m deaf (well, not really), but at least my ear plugs work.

Grand Island

Friday night, I went to a rock concert. It was held at a student night club in town. The club bears a striking resemblance to a set from some cheesy vampire movie. Your first impression when walking through the doors (after having your handbag checked for bottles and your arm stamped), is that someone must be desperate to save on electricity. The fact that the walls and the sparse furniture are also painted pitch black, adds to the whole vampire theme. The only thing that messes with the impression, are the large, red candles placed everywhere with the words “merry Christmas” on them. There’s always music blaring out of the speakers, loud enough to make you permanently deaf, and since the new smoking law came through and banned smoking in all public places, they’ve gone a bit nuts with the smoke machine. People need to be able to hide behind a cloud of smoke if they want to, law or no law, dammit.

The concert was scheduled to start at nine, but since no rock band ever goes on stage as scheduled, we turned up at around eleven. It was still to early, and we spent the next hour trying to have a conversation by finding clever ways to combine shouting, eye movements and gesturing. Thinking back, I’m not sure either of us had the same conversation.

It’s not as if Grand Island wasn’t worth waiting for though, and I crawled happily into bed around three am with a loud ringing in my ears.