Monday Rambles

TOP OF THE MORNIN'!

Is June really almost over?  Egads!

Have I really only done less than a dozen posts this month?  Odd's Bodkins!

I shall have to do something to rectify that.  Jinkies!

I've decided that I'm going to divide Monday Rambles posts with  headers from here on out.  On weeks when I really ramble, the posts seem to be really disparate and jarring to read, so hopefully this will smooth things out a bit.

Now, if you don't want to read me babbling about toenails, comic books, Komodo dragons, or making mashed potatoes while dancing the Mashed Potato, you can skip those sections.  Or at least you could if the headers made any sense.  Chances are they're not going to.  Not at this blog.  But, hopefully, maybe, they'll at least be entertaining.

Now someone remember to email me on Sunday to remind me to have headers next Monday.

BELATED HAPPIES!

No, not "belated hippies" although that does sound kind of interesting.  Belated Happy Father's Day to all the Dads, Grandpas, and people with Dads out there.  I hope you all got to do something fun together yesterday. If, like me, your father has passed on, then I hope you had some happy memories to look back on.

HE WAS THE GREATEST!
 
Muhammad Ali's funeral was one of the biggest things to ever happen in Louisville.  Outside of the Derby each year and visits by the President or candidates for President, I can't recall another event that stirred up this much attention for our fair city.  The Queen came through once, but that was for the Derby.  Usually, the only way to garner excitement around here is to either be a horse or dress up like one.

The story behind the caption.

Anyway, along the procession route, people were given sidewalk chalk to express their feelings about Ali's passing.  I was walking downtown a couple of days later and saw this one and thought it was cool.

HEALTH WOES

I'm having some issues right now, but I'm hoping they will pass in a while.  It may take a few weeks, though.  I've stopped taking the steroids.  Between the effects on my blood sugar (sky high), my blood pressure (getting that way) and my weight (approaching aircraft carrier status), I decided that I couldn't take them any longer.  I refuse to be known as "Fat Cancer Guy."  (Although that could be an interesting super-hero concept.) Or, as I told Keith, "I'm beating cancer.  I will not be taken down by Diabetes aggravated by the drugs given to me to help make the treatments more tolerable."

Of course, being me (and also my mother's child), I just stopped taking the damn thing.  I never took the full prescribed dosage, so I though that one little milligram would be easy to step away from.  Oh my galoshes!  I've had muscle and joint aches like you would not believe ever since!  At least the headaches have stopped.  And the joint and muscle pain only flares up now when I've been busy for a while.  At first, I would just sit there and throb and moan.  (Yes, I did moan.  I'm a man.  That's how we deal with illness.)

Ibuprofen seems to keep things under control.  I know some of this is from my body adjusting to life without Mother's Little Helper, but some of it is all the little aches and pains I've always had, but was not noticing thanks to the steroid.  I'm also experiencing periods of weakness and major fatigue and seem to move awfully slow these days.  Some of that last comes from being as large as a parade float.  You never see one of those suckers tearing around like an Indy car either.

Of course, being me, I only did research about coming off steroids when the effects started getting really bad.  It was then that I found out about tapering the dosage.  Keith thought I should go back on them and then start taking them every other day or something, but I'm soldiering ahead cold turkey.  My mother was a Campbell and this is the way that Campbells go about doing things.  At least in my branch.  Well, except none of the others would have bothered to research anything. I'm counting on mine being after the fact to help keep me in the clan.  True to my family, I did not consult with my doctor either.  (I'm not saying you have to do it my way, in fact, you probably shouldn't, but some things are genetically predisposed to happen.)

Right now it's all playing higgeldy piggledy with my life, but I think once it settles down, I'll be able to manage.  I told Keith that once I'm down to just dealing with the fatigue from the cancer drug (which is the major side effect), I'll take it slower if I have to or add in extra days for rest or add in more naps.  You'll never ever hear me complain about more naps.

OH THE HEAT!

Something else contributing to the sluggishness around here is the HEAT and its bff HUMIDITY.  This one is not just hitting me, but everyone.  Full blown Ohio Valley Summer is here.  Staying in and taking more naps doesn't sound so bad.

OH THE KITTIES! 

Especially when you can do it with these two.

This is Lacy.

Of course I'm his sitter!  He's named after a Hobbit!

And this is Frodo who wouldn't sit still for a picture, so this is the best I could do.  He did manage to photo-bomb Lacy's pic.

They're the two little friends I was pet-sitting most of last week and part of the week before.  I've been sitting for Frodo nearly ten years now, whenever his Mommy goes away on vacation.  The other pets that were part of the family when I started have all gone on.  The year after my mother died, I spent the better part of two months over there while she was tending to her father in his final days.

Lacy's the new girl.  She still hasn't figured out if it's okay for me to be staying there, but she did figure out that I give good head and belly rubs.

YARD SALES

So anyway, the reason that I didn't have a Mazda shot the other Saturday was that I had started having one of my weak and achy spells during the middle of the day.  It was too bad too.  This was the sale at the last gold standard church, plus the surrounding community.  It's always good.

The church sale lived up to its reputation.  They fill just about every room but the sanctuary with stuff, all organized by category.  It's the same every year too, so if you're a regular, you know what is going to be where.  They set a rule this year that nothing would be priced less than 50 cents, which kind of bummed me out.  I imagine it bummed out a few of the old lady pricers too, because I still found 25 and 10 cent stuff.  I think if i were an eighty year old chruch lady volunteer who had been doing this for years, I would go ahead and price it how I always did it.  Silly rules!

The community sale was great too.  We went to grab some eats at McDonald's first, so we went into this city from the opposite end we usually do.  It's a pretty good-sized little community, full of all kinds of twisty little streets and cul-de-sacs.  We do this every year and we've never been through all of it.

I met some sellers who were selling all their sushi dishes, because they finally realized that they love sushi a lot more than they love the idea of making it themselves.  We laughed about that and I told them about the sushi making kit I bought with the same plan in mind and never used.  I have no idea what they thought about me buying the sushi dishes.  We just all kind of acted like it was natural.

At another house there were four or five different people set up selling stuff.  The owners got the cool spot inside the garage, of course.  They told me that their yard was "just like a mini-mall."  I bought a vintage Bingo set from them and they threw in a stack of old game boards for free.  One of the women in the yard was selling her mother's old books and magazines from the 40's.  We talked for a long time about our love for old graphics and designs and she showed me a portfolio she had made of the ads from some of the magazines that had fallen apart.  It was cool, but way too pricey for me.

My favorite spot was the one where two little boys--"going into third grade" they told me--were running the show, under the watchful eye of dad, who stayed at the top of the driveway.  He let them do everything, and most of the stuff was theirs, but he was also close at hand to supervise and answer questions if needed.  They also took the money to him and he kept it out of sight of any wandering hands and eyes.  I bought a nice Wolverine race car from them, so of course we had to talk about Wolverine for a bit.  Then Spider-man.  Then Batman.  I finally asked if they were brothers, and one of them said they were just friends, but he was helping so he could earn enough money to buy something there that he wanted.

 Anyway, we don't have any pics, because we cut things short when I started feeling bad and I went back to nap with Frodo and Lacy.  We just kind of unloaded in a hurry and I forgot to take any pics.

But I do have pics to go with the stuff from yesterday's Mazda shot, so check back tomorrow for the reveal.

LISTEN TO THE VENDOR MOAN

And this is the part where we (or rather I) wail about how bad June's booth sales have been.  This past weekend was probably the worst one I have ever had.  Wednesday was the strongest day last week, and it was a really good day.  But it was bookended by one day that was less than five (!) dollars and one that wasn't much over that.

I know all the drill about slower sales in the summer, but I swear this is the worst summer I've had in seven years as a vendor. 

Oh well.  I'm heading over today with a Mazda load of crap lovely merchandise in hopes of turning this big ole ship away from the iceberg.  I finally made next month's rent, but it's a good thing that I've done some bulk buys cheaply, plus snagging a lot of freebies lately, because I'm not looking at a big check for the other expenses.

If you happen to know a wealthy person named Penelope or Duke--you know the type, diamond-studded sunglasses and a Chihuahua with a designer collar--who's looking to drop several hundred on quality secondhand flea market merchandise, send 'em my way.  If they buy enough, I'll even cut you in on the action.

You can sing that header to the tune of a Hank Williams classic, if you're so inclined.

MY WHAT TALENTED PACHYDERMS!

Apparently, the elephants in these parts are quite prodigious.

I don't care how skilled they are, though.  No elephant is getting near the parts of my anatomy associated with fertility with sharp needles.  I'd end up having to get the treatment for stress after that, for sure!

NERDS JUST WANT TO HAVE FUN

This is one of my favorite weekends of the year coming up--DERBY CITY COMICON!!!!!!  I got my pass the other day.

It has been a real pleasure to see this one grow and improve year after year.  Homegrown cons by local folk are the best.

Of course, I go mainly for the shopping, but I've not had a lot of luck with the comic hunting this year.  I've gotten small batches here and there, but not the big scores of great stuff that I'm used to finding.  Hopefully, this will be a good con for that.  I've already checked out the list of vendors and seen several that should be pretty good, including several of my regulars.

Failing that, maybe I can find another Batman shirt.  Do they make them in blimpo size?

DVDS OF THE WEEK 

Since I was pet-sitting in a house with no WiFi and none nearby to surf on, I had the world's longest and cheesiest bizarro film festival.  I seriously must have watched at least two dozen DVD's.  Me and Frodo had a ball.  Lacy's not much for movies.

It was two hard to pick one favorite, so I ended up choosing two.  First, from legendary Hammer Films, starring equally legendary Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing:

Image Source

You seriously cannot have a cheesy film festival with that many movies and not include at least one Hammer Dracula film.  This one is a total ball.  Sure there are plot holes galore and a truckload of unanswered questions at the end, but it's a ton of fun to watch.  Lee and Cushing are actor's actors and they give it their all, no matter how silly things get.  And they do get a bit silly.  Dracula has a bevy of vampiric women in matching outfits chained up in coffins in his basement for starters.  Why?  Because he's Dracula!  They actually get nearly as much screen time as the big guy himself and all they do is writhe around and squeal and hiss.

It doesn't get much better than this.  I am now hunting through my stash to see if I have any more films from Hammer.

My other choice was a cartoon show I had never heard of before.

Image from good old Amazon!

This show is kind of a mix between X-Files, Men in Black, and one of my fave animated shows ever:  Ben Ten Alien Force.  The basic premise is that aliens have been visiting Earth for centuries, giving rise to most of our myths and legends and monsters.  Most of their purposes are less than benevolent.


An alliance of government agencies created the Roswell incident as a hoax in the 40's, to try and convince the world that aliens don't exist.  Ever since, they've been fighting the evil creatures, while denying they exist.  The plot definitely takes some twists and turns, and like most shows of this nature, you're never quite sure who to trust.  The Wikipedia page for the show does a good job of breaking it down.  (SPOILER ALERT!)


Plus, one of the characters is a Banshee!  I am now on a quest to track down more of this fun show.

THIS MEANS YOU

WRAPPING UP!

 Well, this was a rambly ramble.  I had a lot stored up since last week.  Have some Music for Monday to help it all go down.