I don't know why I suddenly remembered this story. Maybe because it is spring, and in spring firewood is about the last thing I think of, yet today in my travels I saw someone getting a truckload of firewood delivered. This happened very early on, perhaps even before we were Officially Married, so we're talking WELL over twenty years ago.

Anyway, Back In the Day, Mojo and her Favorite Husband were this cooperative machine-like team when it came to firewood. (Well, we still are, only lately we've gotten lazy and have it delivered instead of wasting our spare time scrounging around for it. But I digress.) We were renting a house with a wood stove in the basement. The Favorite Husband's job was to cut and collect the firewood from somewhere on the property, throw it in the pickup, drive back to the house, back up to the cellar hatchway and fling the firewood down into the cellar. My job was to lurk in the cellar and stack the wood while avoiding getting beaned with the firewood my Favorite Husband was flinging down upon me. You can probably surmise where this story is going to go, knowing the way Mojo's luck generally runs, but THIS time the story will run COUNTER to your guess!  MORE Mojo! »

So Mojo is not entirely sure, and I'm too lazy to look it up, but either Tuesday was Teacher Appreciation Day, or this whole week was Teacher Appreciation Week. I've seen it both ways, along with exhortations that I should thank the dozens of patient people through the years who have attempted to crack the amazingly thick piece of concrete that is Mojo's awesome heavy brain. Perhaps it was just one of those made-up Facebook memes. Like I said, too lazy to look it up.

Mojo has always appreciated all who have bothered to teach her things, whether they were the underpaid and underappreciated victims of the public school system or utter strangers who have taken the time to ask "What the HELL is wrong with you?" and then proceeded to set me straight. It is an uphill battle of Sisyphus... Sisipheen... Sisy... Herculean proportions. Mojo tries, but, you know. THINGS HAPPEN.

As it turns out, while Mojo was unaware of any Teacher Appreciation Days or Weeks or Parades or Whatnot, she was nonetheless participating anyway, and can now pretend that it was all on PURPOSE. Because Tuesday I ended up seeing my junior high art teacher, a lovely, patient woman I shall call Mrs. B. Mrs. B is one of those teachers you just ADORE, and though it's been over thirty years since I saw her, I've frequently wondered how she was and all that stuff. Wonder no more, for she recently joined my Favorite Mother's Tai Chi class at the senior center, which led to them talking about me behind my back (despite the THOUSANDS of students she has had through her career, she actually DID remember me, and cited various pieces of art to prove it), and eventually led to this pleasant reunion at the senior center, which then moved to the local Panera's. Where the Favorite Father, it turns out, was lurking (I'm not sure if he's doing Sudoku as he claims or merely flirting with the wait staff, but he's there, like, ALL THE TIME), so the four of us had a lovely brunchy-lunchy catchup time.  MORE Mojo! »

So lately Mojo has been reading and enjoying rage comics. They tend to be somewhat polarizing; some people like them, and some just can't STAND them. I was inspired for a couple of reasons: first, while you can draw your own, there is a growing library of faces and props that make the whole process fairly quick and painless. These things are so POORLY drawn--kinda on purpose--that they are a main source of irritation for the people who do not like such comics.

On the other hand, getting real emotion out of stick figures is quite an accomplishment, and the faces that have survived the process have really evolved to the point where you don't really have to say anything, you just put the face in the panel and everyone knows what you mean.  MORE Mojo! »

Yes, even a pathetic old fuddy-duddy like Mojo can express herself the way the kids on the internet do, thereby pretending she is hip when in reality she's a couple of years behind the pack. But thanks to Dan Awesome's RageMaker, even someone as clueless as Mojo can make a rage comic! Before long I expect my Favorite Mother to join the trend!

So Mojo's heard about this book. I won't say the title or even get into the specific topic of said book. I will be generic and say it's on, umm, "Creativity". The reviews have been so universally (and suspiciously) stellar I've been thinking about buying it, just to see what all the fuss is about.

And here we run into a slight problem. Mojo is usually not Spontaneous Girl. Mojo does not whimsically throw money at something, no matter how much she has on her. No, Mojo is something of a stick-in-the-mud who has to be talked into things. So when I saw this book has all these foaming, raving reviews instead of saying "That's IT! I'll TAKE it!" Mojo is the sort to say "Hmmm, this sounds like a possibility. Let's do more research." Yeah, unless you really enjoy trying to talk people into doing things, friendship with Mojo is a trying ordeal at best.

So the reviews of this book--again, on, ahem, "creativity"--convinced me to to more research. And luckily for me, right now the author is on this big publicity tour (apparently it was just published a few months ago), so I have plenty of opportunities to read interviews with said author as well as LISTEN to interviews via podcasts.  MORE Mojo! »

Okay, so Mojo lost track of her Netflix queue. Stopped paying attention to it. As a result, the last batch wound up being three--count 'em, THREE--foreign films. With subtitles. Lots of sadness and drama, and not an explosion or a car chase in the lot.

So Mojo finds herself ever-so-slightly in the doghouse. The Favorite Husband's doghouse is still a very nice, kind place, don't get me wrong; but what happens is, all weekend long, the Favorite Husband looks somewhat pointedly at the pile of Netflix envelopes on the table, then sighs a wee little bit, and then takes a good fifteen minutes perusing our library of videos before picking one we have not seen in a while. Clearly his life is a living hell, and it is ALL MY FAULT.

So this morning (okay, I forgot again) I had to rush to the Netflix site to make sure the next batch has at least ONE Favorite-Husband-Approved movie that Mojo will not be slitting her wrists over. (It happens to be Al Pacino's DOG DAY AFTERNOON, in case you're interested.) And a current ban on sad, subtitled foreign movies, until he gets over the mild betrayal and can once again be receptive to the idea of reading subtitles for two hours. (He's not insensitive, just somewhat dyslexic, and doesn't want to have to WORK too much watching movies.)

So while I'm on Netflix, I'm skootching things around to make the next few weeks more Favorite-Husband-Friendly, and on a whim I check the New Releases. And guess what. Be still my beating heart. I don't know how I could have missed the veritable public relations blitzkrieg, but the second volume of ATLAS SHRUGGED has been released on DVD.  MORE Mojo! »

We have long established that poor Mojo, in addition to her many other social faults, is also a bird nerd of lllloooooonnnnnng standing. One needs only to search the site for the word "birds" and you will instantly be transported into a magical realm of, umm, birds. Even Mojo's occasional brushes with greatness tend to dwell not so much on said greatness's many contributions to society, but on freakin' BIRDS.

Mojo also subscribes to Boing Boing's Twitter feed. Boing Boing, of course, is a directory of wonderful things, and whenever Mojo wants to look pathetically hip or cool she might share a link she finds on Boing Boing. And if she is feeling particularly generous, she will give Boing Boing full credit instead of taking the link from the original source and pretending like she is cool enough to read said original source on a regular basis. Because we all know by now, in addition to her bird nerdliness, Mojo is in reality an old clueless fuddy-duddy who relies greatly on Google and a hipper Younger Sister to Explain Things to Her. (And finds, as she gets older and even more of a stick-in-the-mud, that many of these things, once explained to her, she wishes she never once ever heard about. But I digress.)

So perhaps the more imaginative among you can guess at Mojo's glee when she saw the BB headline in her Twitter feed: "Penguins: Now with more color". (A great many people who are NOT bird nerds nonetheless like penguins, probably because they march around like serious little people in tuxedos, which makes non-bird people giggle and say stupid things like "Oh, look! They think they're people!") I was a hair disappointed to learn that the added color to the penguins was not some exotically-plumaged new variety, but merely the result of thermal imaging. Which is important and interesting in its own light, but not what I expected when I clicked on the link. (Some of this convoluted thought process was no doubt because I was trapped with the dog in a hotel room at the time, and since I don't really watch cable all that much I was bored out of my skull. But again, I digress.)  MORE Mojo! »

...Mojo joins the select, elite, TINY percentage of people who are related to someone who was HIT BY A HOCKEY PUCK during a professional hockey game!

Take THAT, all you nay-sayers and negative Nellies! Mojo has ACCOMPLISHED SOMETHING you most probably HAVE NOT. Nyyeeeah.

(And sorry, you bloodthirsty types. No major injuries. An eyewitness said she turned around as he was picking up the "still wet" puck, but it turns out the wet was merely ice water, not RIVERS OF BLOOD.)

So for those of you with dreams and goals, let this be inspiration that you--yes, YOU--can accomplish just about ANYTHING! How, I'm not so certain, since you're currently goofing off on the internet reading a worthless blog instead of doing something productive with your life, but who knows? Maybe someday you, too, will be hit by a hockey puck.

One can only hope, at least....

Mojo

Another public service announcement by your good pretend internet friend, Mojo. She only asks that you remember her kindness while you are testifying against her in a court of law. In the meantime, while Mojo has always been a "never say never" kinda gal, here's why there will probably never be a Pope Mojo:

1. Mojo's Not Catholic.

I'm by no means an authority on the Catholic Church, but I can't help but suspect this is gonna be a deal breaker right off the bat. Frankly, I'd be playing a lot of catchup compared to the other candidates. I suppose I'd have to convert, and, quite frankly, that sounds like an awful lot of work just to swing a free trip to Italy.

2. Mojo's Female.

I'm led to believe this is some sort of problem with the Catholic Church when it comes to ultimate authority. Though there have always been rumors of "Pope Joan" several hundred years ago (she--very amusingly, to Mojo's admittedly sick sense of humor--GAVE BIRTH in the middle of some sort of procession, which is how she was found out, which makes Mojo think she must have been one heckuva person to process and give birth simultaneously), the reality of Pope Mojo is even more tenuous than that time-honored schoolyard rumor (along with the rumors of secret passageways between the monks' bedrooms and the nuns'--yes, Mojo grew up among several Catholic friends and this was a constant speculative urban legend when they Became Of Age).

3. Mojo's Not Celibate.

Yeah, um, she's been married for well over twenty years, and with the guy for even longer. And, umm, the whole celibacy thing probably isn't going to change on either side, huh? So, uhhhh, that's a big no, there. We'll leave it at that.  MORE Mojo! »

So here are the before photos. We are in the 12"--18" range--that's INCHES, if you're a Spinal Tap fan--I wholeheartedly agree twelve to eighteen FEET would be Too Much Snow. Mojo considers anything over a foot to be a good snow. Anything less is just an eye-rolling inconvenience.

Anyway, Mojo has plenty of food--gonna put some chicken stew on the stove once I'm done here--plenty of firewood inside (and out, if need be), batteries, flashlights and candles. We've done this before. Many times.  MORE Mojo! »