I Had A Blowout :(

It was crazy! I'm driving on an overpass on Highway 183 and I was nowhere near an off-ramp.

So I pulled over onto the shoulder, which happens to be just wide enough that you can change a tire on a medium-sized car.

It went smoothly. There was a point when I wanted to grab my camera and take some pics, because I realized I will probably never be on an overpass in the middle of crazy traffic, but my hands were too grubby. So sorry I can't show ya pics.

I've got some exciting things going on with my screenplay writing, but I shouldn't really talk about anything until I'm a little further along. Still no money on the horizon... yet. ;) But some groovy, groovy worlds and characters swirling around in my noggin!

Ooh! I heard from my gorgeous Gnomey!!! :D

No particular annecdote related to that, but it always make me giggle like a giddly little school girl when I hear from her sweet self, lol.

I should get back to work, but PEACE & LOVE TO ALL!!!

EVOO To You, Too, Dude

I keep hearing this phrase that I am completely unfamiliar with: "extra-virgin olive oil".

What the hell is that?

When confronted with a configuration of words that is completely alien to me, my first step is to analyze the individual words and ascertain their meanings.

Which leads me to a rather odd mental image...

So, it would seem, in the case of extra-virgin olive oil that not only have the olives not had sex, but they've never even masturbated.

Which, to me, is kind of a sad life, right? I mean, you grow up never having experienced an orgasm, then you're liquified and eaten!

(And not in the fun way, either!)

I mean, I suppose that if I'm eating a food cooked with olive oil, I prefer that no one has had sex with the olives beforehand. So I guess I can get behind the concept of virgin olive oil.

But I think "extra-virgin" is going a little too far. I say let the olives touch themselves as much as they like during their short lives!

And how Puritanical and repressed are we as a society that we are so concerned with the chastity of olives? Is this emotionally healthy behavior? Should we be peeking in olives' bedroom windows?

I'd like to make some kind of sexy joke here about "extra" meaning that the olives are bringing more olives into the mix, but if they're virgin olives they're probably not doing anything particularly interesting with the extra olives.

My buddy Pete told me that, apparently, extra-virgin olive oil is just what folks are using now to cook with. Like, when my parents were kids people cooked with butter, and their parents cooked with lard, and when I was a kid everyone cooked with "cooking oil", and I guess now it's EVOO. But I don't get where the "extra-virgin" bit enters into it. Does this phrase actually comunicate information about the preparation of the olives, or is it just filler like "super-duper"?

I'll Wikipedia the phrase and find out.

One second...

Okay, so it appears that extra-virgin olive oil (DUDE! I totally got the spelling right before I had seen the phrase in print, right down to the hypen! You're impressed, aren't you!) means that the oil has no more than 0.8 % acidity which, apparently, means the oil has a better taste.

Ya learn something every day. :)

LOVE TO MY GNOMEY!!! :D

Hurricane Ike...

This bugger has taken over my entire workday.

I came into work with My Genius Friend Dave squealing like a stuck pig because of pressure being applied to him from all possible directions. Then I slowly got to see (sort of) what he had been going through all day, lol.

I mean, I've still got the sweeter shift. I'm dealing with maybe a third of what he had to deal with. (Maybe...) But this is most definitely what Genius Dave refers to as one of those days wherein I earn my check. I'm glued to my switchboard watching the live coverage of Ike (the eye of the hurricane hasn't yet reached Houston; it's still getting walloped by the northwestern "eye wall" and more than three million people are already without power there) and cutting the local weather-babe in when she's got local info to impart.

Whoa. Had to pause while writing because I had to do a cut-in.

But I was saying, it's not heavy lifting or breaking rocks or anything, but I have to pay close attention tonight.

It's kind of interesting, though: I've actually experienced this hurricane as it has landed in real time. It's an interesting thing. Watching a hurricane begin to come onto the coast, then actually "land" (which weather-type folks count as when the middle of the eye of the hurricane is over land -- despite the fact that the destructive winds hit land LONG before the eye does) and make its way from the water across the land...

One can easily imagine an H. P. Lovecraft type Elder Thing slowly slipping out of space and devouring the planet, impossibly slow and impossibly inescapable.

Well... One with my sick li'l mind can imagine it, anyway, lol. ;P

But it's odd. We're a society that has little patience. If you're not watching the radar for hours upon hours you might be tempted (as I was today, actually) to look around you and think that probably nothing's going to happen.

But when the thing eventually arrives and you start seeing that footage -- winds that scoop boats out of their ports and lob them inland -- and you remember that this really is a scary friggin' event that's transpiring! And THEN, as you wait and wait and WAIT for this thing to slake its figurative hunger and move on, you really REALLY get a sense of the horror. It just comes and comes and comes and keeps coming, then there's the half hour to forty-five minutes of catching your breath during the eye, then it's on again, and again it just seems to keep coming!

I've got to say that, selfish as the sentiment is, I am so very grateful that Ike is unlikely to attack Austin.

Okay, I should get back to work.

Just wanted to check in, and to say "LOVE YOU, SWEETY" to my Hot-Thang! ;D (She's such a goddess!!!)

If you're safe and warm at home, ENJOY! :)