It's probably not good form to quote Claudius, the smarmy, poison-loving brother-killing all-around-evil usurping king of Denmark, but I suspect from now on our wedding anniversary will always be couched, as Claudius put it,

"Have we, as 'twere with a defeated joy,--
With an auspicious and a dropping eye,
With mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage,
In equal scale weighing delight and dole..."

...since this year our wedding anniversary--our 20th--happened to be marred by the early morning unexpected death of our dear friend, Randall. Such news really throws the whole "happy anniversary" thing out the window. I was driving down the mountain early that morning on one of those tiny twisty roads when my cell phone rang. It was my mother, and I expected her to start singing to me, and instead I was slapped in the face by really terrible news. I'm not sure how I made it down the mountain, but I pulled into the parking lot of Mrs. Murphy's and just SAT there for an hour or so. Randall was a member of the fambly for several years, and such a force of life and fun it is still hard to think he is actually gone. I'm going down Thursday for his memorial and I'm still half expecting, as per usual for my trips to New York, to see him at some point.  MORE Mojo! »

I can remember the first time I saw a wild turkey. We were renting a house in the middle of an industrial park--sort of this island of woods and fields in the middle of this huge airport industrial park, maybe half a mile from the airport. We had this very long half-a-mile driveway, and we were on our way out--the driveway dumped us in the middle of an aerospace contractor's parking lot--when we encountered this huge bird sitting in the middle of our driveway. It was way too big and ugly to be one of our chickens, and not ugly enough to be a turkey vulture.  MORE Mojo! »

...so Monday night I agree to work for one of my staff at the lieberry. It closes at 9:00 pm. My house is about two miles from the place, making it one of the shortest commutes in human history, with about half of that on the main drag in town and the other on tiny winding roads that only the locals drive on.

The library is in the center of town, and aside from a handful of houses all you got is the library, the general store across the street, and further down you got Town Hall and the post office on one side and a church and the volunteer fire station on the other.  MORE Mojo! »

I like Toyotas. I own a Toyota. I like them better than REAL Otas, to be honest. Which is probably why I take it so personally (okay, also because I have no real hobbies or goals in life) when I don't like their advertising campaigns.

First was their Tacoma "It's a guy thing", which of course is a slap in the face for all the females out there who are driving their cute little Impulse Red Tacos. And we females don't really appreciate being slapped in the face. Well, most of us, anyway. What you do in the privacy of your own home is YOUR business.

Now it's some new little high-milage cheap transportation they are calling a "Yaris". I have no idea where the "word" Yaris comes from, but judging from their commercials I wouldn't want to encounter one in a parking lot.  MORE Mojo! »

Lest people accuse me of my usual intellectual snobbery, let me point out or admit or whatever verb you wish to use here that back when I was a wee lass I probably saw the Rocky Horror Picture Show at least a half a dozen times in the movie theatres. Not enough to be considered a raving dress-up fan, but I knew most of the songs and I knew what to do or shout or throw at all the appropriate times. And yes, it was great fun.

My first Rocky Horror experience was when I was in high school and I was invited by my collegiate brother to a midnight showing at the UConn campus in Storrs. This was UConn's pre-basketball fame days, when you could actually walk around the campus without being pelted with basketballs. I remember my first Rocky Horror jaunt as a complexity of mixed messages and nonsequiturs that (being the puerile fool that I am) make me giggle to this day.  MORE Mojo! »