2001-05-05 | 1:57 a.m.

corduroy licorice had pie-in-the-sky hopes. one day he dreamt of opening a restaurant in seattle's space needle that served 27 varieties of pie.

***

this weekend i got to see my grandma. even though senility is setting in, she seems to be content with life as she knows it.

her live-in caretaker added a tv to grandma's decor. it's so odd seeing a tv in her house because her church frowned on such secular entertainment. her not having a tv made family visits kind of tough on my sister and me when we were growing up. the tv was our third parent, for god's sake.

now she's forgotten that tv is the devil's tool. now she talks to the tv. an actress asks another character, "are you hungry?" grandma answers "no, are you?" when the actress starts crying, grandma chides, "what are you crying for?" when people argue on tv, she'll hit the set and say, "quit fighting!"

i know that it's sad, but for some reason my sister and i got a kick out of it. even though grandma wasn't sure who we were, she enjoyed our visit. she gave my sister an hour-long footrub and kept telling us what pretty girls we were. you gotta love grandma love. we're sooooo lucky to have her.

***

hiking is so wonderful. it's enjoyable, but tough, exercise with beautiful distractions and fresh air all about. my sister and i tackled an eight-mile hike in sequoia national park. as a bonus, my sister almost stepped on a rattlesnake and we think we may have gotten exposed to poison ivy. are we not studs? are we not devo?

***

wink of the day:

did you know dieter of sprockets suffers from tarantism? perhaps you do, as well?

TARANTISM (noun)

PRONUNCIATION: (TAR uhn tiz uhm )

DEFINITION: a disorder in which the victim has an uncontrollable urge to dance, especially prevalent in Italy in the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries

TIP: It was once a popular belief that this urge to dance was caused by the bite of a tarantula.

(definition from wordcommand.com)

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