Ship's Blog: July, 2007

Let's eavesdrop on last night's conversation, after I read my "Busy, Busy Girl" blog entry to Kathy when she was on the drive home:

Kathy: "Everyone must be wondering, 'Exactly where is Kathy while Alix is doing all this work?' They probably think I'm sitting in a lawn chair, drinking a Mai Tai, just listening to the radio and waiting for Bonds to hit a home run. Maybe they even imagine I'm staring at the radio while I cheer him on!"

Alix: "Wait, in the first draft, I explained what you were doing. But then I added some other stuff and that part didn't work with the flow, so it got edited out."  Read more »

I've been pretty quiet for the past five days because I've been busy working on my studio and my garage. Busy as in, manic organizing woman busy, and gee, is this ever overdue!

I am a bit taken aback that I have lived in this house for almost two years and yet I've never completely whipped my studio into shape. I know that Kathy would say that the house was under repairs for months and then I was off fixing up another house to sell and then I had to deal with cancer...blah, blah, blah...but REALLY! The time has come to make this studio work for me.  Read more »

In last week's piece, If Our Lives Were Rated by the MPAA..., I included a fun quiz (well, I thought it was fun!) where you could match the film to the wacky-but-true MPAA film rating.

I'm surprised that no one cheated to get the answers. If you go to filmratings.com, you can look up the ratings for thousands of movies. Only films rated after September of 1990 include ratings reasons, which is why I didn't have any older films in the quiz.

So, let's see the answers!

1. Three Ninjas Knuckle Up

N. non-stop ninja action

2. Addams Family Values

I. macabre humor  Read more »

I have angered the Martini Gods. I am not sure how; perhaps it is blasphemy to reveal the secrets of the Vermouth Mister to the uninitiated. If so, I swear on the sacred altar bar of Ketel One, I did not know.

The gods used cunning to reveal their wrath and so I must tell you the story.  Read more »

Perfect Dry Martinis, Every Time

Martini drinkers are a funny lot - we tend to be very specific about how we want our cocktail prepared. I don't know anyone who orders "a martini" and takes whatever they get. We have instructions.

My instructions go like this: Ketel One, extra dry with a twist.  Read more »

Note: When I wrote this post three days ago, I planned to put it online Thursday. However, I ended up posting Hairstyling: A Cautionary Tale, instead, to perk up a friend who needed it. As luck would have it, another esteemed blogger posted something on the same topic as this on Friday, tempting me to delete my own piece. Kathy convinced me otherwise, so here it is.

On a regular basis, while checking my website analytics, I review the searches people do to lead them to my site. It's a good way for me to see what people are looking for, how search engines are indexing my material, and get ideas for new content. It's also, as it turns out, a great way to get a good chuckle or two as I read the crazy ways people end up on my site. Although, crazy is definitely in the eyes of the beholder.  Read more »

A few weeks ago, after having my hair dyed a very normal brown-red (no blue or magenta for a while) I explained to a friend that it would look much better, only I can't style it to save my life. As you know, short hair is not my thing. My stylist had to spend some time showing me what to do to make it look like something intentional. She managed to make it look pretty and I had hope.

But back at home, all the product and scrunching in the world couldn't make my hair look like Halle Berry's. I don't know where I went wrong, but no matter what I did, it just sort of...flopped.  Read more »

Spending too much time in movie theaters watching previews has led me to wonder: What if our lives (or portions of our lives) were rated like movies?  Read more »

Our friends Sue and Jois invited us to participate in their annual community garage sale this year. Eager to de-clutter our garage (and having no desire to host my own garage sale) I said we'd be happy to bring our stuff over and join in. After all, it seemed like a great way to kick-start my return to the Great Garage Project.  Read more »

You may know that once you have had cancer, even when you are declared cancer-free, it is not over. There is often ongoing treatment to help prevent you from getting cancer again, as well as regular follow-ups with an oncologist to screen for recurrence. Just when you want most to stop thinking about cancer, it seems you have to go see someone and talk about it some more.  Read more »

When my brother's oldest daughter was just two years old, I caught her standing in front of a mirror, looking herself up and down. She turned her head from side to side, pursed her lips, and finally sighed.

"This doesn't go," she said, seemingly confused about how those shoes got on her feet with that outfit. I mean, anyone could see that it was a total mistake! I half-expected her to stare at her parents while shaking her head in a slow, disappointed rhythm.  Read more »

This past weekend, our friend Kelly Kilmer was up from Southern California, teaching art classes in San Anselmo. She was kind enough to accept our dinner invitation on Saturday, as well as meet us for breakfast and shopping on Monday. Being the good attentive blogger that she is, of course she provides an account of our adventures online, where she says she has never eaten with anyone (with one exception) who treats food with such high regard.  Read more »

The first eight months after moving into our fixer-upper seemed like an endless jumble of drill bits, odd screws, and mismatched wall anchors. I was forever assembling things or attaching storage items to the wall, whether it be a display shelf or a huge cabinet or heavy-duty garage shelving. Ever the precise girl, it drove me crazy to have unmarked drill bits. Even worse was not knowing which one I needed to drill the proper pilot hole for a given screw.  Read more »