<p>Cur:
No, I can't ask you when you plan on coming out of the closet - it would be too cheap a shot.</p>
<p>(I gotta get off CC, and start getting some serious work done...)</p>
<p>Calm down, optimizerdad - it's not all that exciting down here. A bit dusty if the truth be told. And I got over knee socks years ago. (Hairy legs were never much of a turn on...)</p>
<p>No I'm just sitting here lollygagging - when the conversation above dies down, I spend my time selecting the next wad of gum to devour and mull over information recently garnered from some heavy reading I've been doing - Bryson's " A Short History of Nearly Everything" coupled with Garrett's "The Coming Plague" - her book infers that Bryson's Short History will be even shorter than planned because the Asian bird flu is about to wipe out the world as we know it. I think I need to get more heavy reading - this time on Global Warming - so that I am fully prepared for all the catastrophes about to befall me.</p>
<p>Then again, maybe if I just continue to hide out here, under the booth, eavesdropping on clever, up-beat drunks like Slugg, Sybbie, and Curmudge, the next earthquake or kuru-like virus strain might pass me by.
Shhh! If I close my eyes no one can see me.</p>
<p>:::hopping down off my Pillsbury crescent roll::::Hey, where'd all my Klingons pals go? Went off to fight in another glorious driveway battle, I guess. The inspector never showed up, so I'm stuck with all of this asparagus. :) </p>
<p>Okay, good news. SluggS' college app has been "accommodated" at San Francisco State University. They gave him a student ID# to access his student portal, so he can keep checking back to make sure that his app makes it to the next level of the admissions process. It means that he has to have his transcript sent, and then, all we have to do is throw a virgin into a volcano by November 12th, and he's IN! :D</p>
<p>OK, I can deal with the Klingons, but if somebody starts speaking Elvish, I'm outta here.</p>
<p>
[quote]
"...up-beat drunks like Slugg."
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Moi? I'll cop to being an upbeat slugg and an alien... and from the San Francisco Bay Area, but who you callin' a durnk? I mean, a drunk. :) It's all cyber fun, bugg buddies, and if there weren't so much bit**in' and whinin' going on outside of these Naugahyde doors, well, our beloved Sinner's Alley might not even exist. </p>
<p>Slide me down a basket of those Cheese Nips, Sybbie (that's Nevada speak for, "Please, pass me the beluga and a glass of Cristal, Dahhhling."). Sit back, relax, punch up some zydeco, and don't let this month slip by without noticing what a cool son or daughter you've raised. By "cool," I mean someone who is right now experiencing the rush of being 17 or 18. Seventeen is a long way from perfect, but it beats the He-- out of spending a weekend doing State income taxes and cleaning out gutters. ;)</p>
<p>Despite what we're told, we should not be dragging our kids into Parent Land, where we've learned to equate a certain amount of success with organized stacks of crappola. Look at a high school kid's bedroom, and you are looking into the mind of a teenager. They don't want parents in their rooms any more than they want parents in their heads. This deal works by invitation only. </p>
<p>I'm no font. Sluggbuggs aren't known for their wisdom. Swearing, maybe. Squishiness, sure. And, the ability to morph into our favorite scary alien...well, it's legendary. But, what I do know from watching a lot of parents launch their kids into college is that October is one of the worst months for inserting the parental head up the old parental wahzoo, in terms of letting high school seniors drive the process. They aren't experienced adults, and I don't believe that the system is really set up to make them function with the same abilities. This topic usually produces a discussion punctuated with a lot of flying spit, and it's not an issue on which parents can easily concur. Imho (that means don't flame a poor slugg), it is the way it is because we parents have our excrement together, and we can't help showing our kiddos how to get things done. Good intentions, and all that.</p>
<p>Hmm, I just noticed how many anal references I made. Perhaps, if MY parents had been more involved in MY college choice (instead of smoking cigarettes and doing whatever they were doing), I would have gone to a nice, private school, and I'd be a better writer. Instead, I ended up at Berkeley with all of the other aliens. Okay, I'll be hiding under one of the tables when the pizza guy gets here. :D</p>
<p>It's okay, Slugg...I like drunks. Actually, I was raised by one of whom I am quite fond (he, in turn, raised a couple of near-teetotalers....)</p>
<p>And I agree - the desperation on the other threads is quaking to at least a 4 or 5 on the richter scale. It's a bit scary really, the tempers, swipes, jabs.</p>
<p>I mean, in the larger realm of things, is it really that important where one goes to school? I think not. I think you are a very good writer, Slugg. I went to the writer's school (Kenyon) and you top me hands down.</p>
<p>Is that Santa driving a backhoe out in my driveway? Is that what he does during the off-season? I don't know, I'm hearing lots of "Ho-ho-ho'ing" out there. :) </p>
<p>Nah, it's Jeff, the foreman. He just came to the door. Jeff is now among the few humans who have ever seen me braless, in my college sweatshirt and non-matching long underwear pajama pants with the snowflakes on them -- preshower, premakeup, preteethbrushing...the hair this morning looking like hissing serpents. It's only a matter of time before he turns into stone. We'll park Jeff next to the plastic flamingos and the garden gnome. ;)</p>
<p>Thanks, Crash. Yeah, it's a scary time of year. I just want to say to everyone here that you will never see me walking around in skin-tight workout shorts holding a big Pilates ball. Nope, never. :D</p>
<p>How can I keep up with you guys, when i am writing to people who post in the a.m and it is my p.m! Never mind. I will be there soon enough!</p>
<p>Slugg:
Sounds like you've found a really cost-effective way to make stone statues. Do you have any <em>idea</em> how much it would cost to buy the basic marble for a full-size human statue? Or the sculptor's processing fee to then chip away at it, and make a real-life statue out of it?</p>
<p>You could get a really nifty home-grown <em>cough</em> business going here. Not to mention a second occupation as an amateur hit-woman, with a guarantee that the cops will never get you. After all, where are they gonna find a body to autopsy?</p>
<p>Or a weapon? I don't think snowflake pajama pants or sweatshirts without proper foundation garments require concealed weapons permits, as yet.</p>
<p>overseas, I can't keep up with them and I am mostly here;). I have to go out and get my permit for my snowflake pyjama pants tomorrow. </p>
<p>Does this ever strike you all as virtual Laser Quest? God I love Laser Quest. But my kids are too big now to have any excuse to play. Perhaps for my 50th birthday....</p>
<p>slugg, the image of you this am is very, very comforting to me. Soul sister.</p>
<p>Yeah, slugg that's what rolling in at the crack of dawn from SA when you know you have people coming to the house will do to ya. Next time slather some gel on the ends and everyone will think that your hair is combed or you've got great bed head</p>
<p>At least you wen't holding a large pina colada and calling it breakfast (wait a minute, we are encouraged to havea bit of fruit in the morning and they do use pineapples in those drinks)... never mind</p>
<p>
[quote]
** posted by our own cheif bottle washer, Curmie **That was the original impetus for Sinner's Alley in the Cafe, doddsdad and I admitting that while we don't want to care-we do care that our kids are or may be excluded from somewhere "special". A place to go when you admit the "exclusivity" bug had bit you and you were infected. (It is has since wonderfully morphed into a place for CC's ne'er-do-wells and other assorted or admitted heathens.)
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Lets raise our glasses as we have finally found our station in life as ne'er-do-wells and other assorted or admitted heathens </p>
<p>Yeah:)</p>
<p>hear, hear!</p>
<p>Hear, hear, Sybb. Now, that's the second time I've been called a heathen. The first time was when my new SIL announced that she was not going to spend Christmas with the fam because we were a "bunch of Godless heathens." ;) I thought it was redundant to say that we were both "Godless" and "heathens," and it left us all a little confused. </p>
<p>Up until that time, we were under the impression that we were part-Norse barbarian, part-Druid (we enjoyed the sun, and we liked parades), and part-Nevada Democrat. My dad, the original heathen, was actually an ordained minister of the Universal Life Church. That year, my BIL went to Midnight Mass for the first time in his life, while the rest of us read The Night Before Christmas to the kids and watched them scatter reindeer food (a.k.a. Grape Nuts) out on the lawn. </p>
<p>I kind of miss Number One SIL. She turned out to be a pretty good Klingon warrior chick and part-time desk clerk at their local library. BIL remarried a year ago, and I wish that someone had bothered to tell me before I spent 3 days sharing my favorite martini recipes with his new wife that she is a very religious woman who does not believe in drinking, cursing, or dancing.</p>
<p>I'll try to refrain from fire dancing. :D</p>
<p>About extremely religious relatives (I have a born again cousin-- everyone else in entire family tree is heathen.) How about getting the Christmas cards and birthday cards that always have a nice chunky quotation from Phillippians or whatever...? I know it is meant well, and they surely feel genuinely bad when they contemplate that I am soon-to-be-fire-dancing-for-eternity... but HELLO! I am sick of those cards. Do you think I should be quoting passages from the Scopes trail in MY birthday cards to them? I think not!</p>
<p>
[quote]
woman who does not believe in drinking, cursing, or dancing.
[/quote]
Looking forward to hearing her definition of a <em>Merry</em> Christmas, slugg :eek:.</p>
<p>SBmom - perhaps it's time for the Group Photo here in SA that we can all send out as this year's Christmas card? More festive than Scopes transcripts....</p>
<p>Hey we don't have to wait for chistmas to be merry.</p>
<p>Slugg, </p>
<p>Forget fire dancing for now. I thought you would be working on your best rendition of the monster mash.</p>
<p>Question, Question..</p>
<p>Are we an "elite' group of heathens?</p>
<p>Sybbie from post #377</p>
<p>
[quote]
Slugg, Crash !!</p>
<p>Are we becoming Barflys?</p>
<p>If the basket shoes weren't enough, I just hope I wasn't dancing on the tables to Disco Duck because those yellow baskets could indeed ass for web feet. At least with Redemption Song, I could just sway, bounce a little , sing in a key that only I can sing in and think that I'm cool.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Sybbie from post #1359</p>
<p>
[quote]
Slugg, </p>
<p>Forget fire dancing for now. I thought you would be working on your best rendition of the monster mash.</p>
<p>Question, Question..</p>
<p>Are we an "elite' group of heathens?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Sybbie, I think we're about as "elite" a group of heathens as I can imagine. And I think you may be our tribal dancer.;)</p>