13: I Met Him at the Laundry Mat
1. I brake for views but I go out of my way for a Five Guys restaurant.
2. I don’t know how I ended up in Walmart on Halloween but I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw that they were selling bags of pine cones like the ones all over my yard.
3. There are some things we can’t get in Floyd: water filters, printing ink and electric curlers.
4. I can’t explain THIS or understand it but it sure is fun to watch.
5. Is this an onomatopoeia? Susurrus: the sound leaves make as they rustle and fall.
6. Sweetest internet search that landed someone on my blog this week: “why joe loves colleen.” They landed HERE.
7. The picture above is of the first place I met Joe: the town laundry mat (closed now).
8. He was tie dying shirts for a Blue Mountain School fundraiser and I was filling the trunk of my car with apples from a nearby tree when we met.
9. I already killed a copperhead in my house. Do I also have to fight off a bear? Apparently and according to the bear scat (droppings) left on my front porch we now have a resident bear that is not afraid to get up close and personal.
10. Listening to Terri Gross interview Tom Waits on the drive home from Christiansburg on Monday I realized that I have never enjoyed Waits’s singing voice, which he admits he barks out like a dog, but I enjoy his lyrics and I love his mind.
11. A music critic described the sound of Waits’s voice this way: it’s like it was soaked in a vat of bourbon, left hanging in the smokehouse for a few months, and then taken outside and run over with a car.
12. Waits described his wife and music collaborator this way: “She’s a shiksa goddess and a trapeze artist, all of that. She can fix the truck. Expert on the African violet and all that. She’s outta this world. I don’t know what to say. I’m a lucky man. She has a remarkable imagination. And that’s the nation where I live. She’s bold, inventive and fearless. That’s who you wanna go in the woods with, right? Somebody who finishes your sentences for you.”
13. I recently asked a friend I was writing about how he met his wife. He told me she fell for him when she visited his house and saw that he was a single guy who put up a Christmas tree and decorations for Christmas.
November 2nd, 2011 11:18 pm
Love the word “susurrus.”
November 3rd, 2011 12:47 am
Wow! They actually sell pine cones over there? Part of the fun is going outside to collect them!
November 3rd, 2011 2:10 am
What is up with the bears lately!? I’m in the middle of the city and they trapped a SECOND bear not far from our house near a Walgreens a few months back. It’s just crazy. Be safe!
Happy T13,
~Xakara
Phenomenal Woman
November 3rd, 2011 4:28 am
That is pretty BOLD of that Bear….And rather scary, too, Colleen…..Do be careful, my dear….
I love the way Tom Waits talks about his wife, and think that descriprion of his Voice is PERFECT! It is not a pretty sound, at all.
November 3rd, 2011 8:28 am
I totally love #8 and how you met. That’s awesome!
November 3rd, 2011 10:39 am
love number 2, 6 and your photo of the laundromat. and the story of how you met Joe. the description of Waits’ voice is spot on alright. happy day to you Colleen. thanks for the laughs.
November 3rd, 2011 2:42 pm
LOL on the music critic’s assessment of Tom’s voice. So funny. I agree with you on his talent. One of a kind.
And LOVE Tom’s assessment of imagination!! what a fascinating character.
That R2D2 things IS amazing! Hologram, I guess?
I see you in the defunct laundry mat window taking a photo!!! 🙂
bear scat eh, not a Grizzly improvising jazz after all!
We don’t have Five Guys here, (boohoo) but I hear the burgers are out of this universe!!
xo
November 3rd, 2011 2:59 pm
It’s a black bear, so not generally aggressive but still destructive and scary to me.
The 5 Guys fries are good too!
November 3rd, 2011 3:40 pm
I would love to get a good photo of a bear. I have taken a few but I want to take more.
I have never eaten at Five Guys.
November 3rd, 2011 7:40 pm
I don’t get #4 either??
November 3rd, 2011 11:03 pm
I brake for 5 Guys, too, but not often enough!
November 4th, 2011 9:18 am
2. heh. 6. awww. 8. sweet. 9. good lord. should you stock up on porridge? 10. he sounds like Leonard Cohen. 11.heh, that’s colorful. 13. well. who wouldn’t. he sounds like a sweetie.
November 6th, 2011 9:16 am
the PNW has had such a cool summer with a low berry crop so the bears in WA and BC are foraging for food all over. in whistler they have actually broken into restaurants (because the restaurants are not practicing bear smart procedures with waste products by using bear proof containers as they should, given their location in the middle of bear country). unforunately, it has resulted in some bears being shot because they have become too familiar with humans. countless cubs are now orphans. so very sad. i read an article recently instructing people not to put pumpkins on their porches since the black bears are desperate to eat enough for hibernation, and the berries are just not there. i wondered when i read your post if you had any kind of food or seeds on your porch recently and perhaps some scraps were left. i love the bears dearly, but a bear on my front porch is wayy to close. we don’t even cook with the windows open in fall because we don’t want any attractants to encourage them to come searching. their sense of smell is extremely acute. keep us posted on this. hopefully it will be hibernating soon. wonder if there is a den near you.
November 6th, 2011 10:40 am
It was going after a plastic container of natural fish fertilizer that was under the porch. It did claw it open. We have stopped composting because of the beer. It’s a black bear, so not as aggressive as a brown bear, but still on the porch is too close.