One of the big arguments people had when trying to talk me out of buying an iPad (and buying some other tablet instead) was … “It doesn’t have Flash!” I will now report my experiences on surfing the internet on a device lacking Flash.

Until today, I would have said I hadn’t even noticed I lacked Flash. Oh sure, I can’t play any if the Facebook games, but that is seriously no loss at all. But in general, during my day to day accessing of the internet, I haven’t noticed anything lacking. There hasn’t been anything I’ve wanted to do that I couldn’t do.

But then today happened. I went to the Hobby Lobby web site, as I do every Sunday, to check the upcoming sales. Lo and behold, in order to display a single image of the weekly flier, Flash required! I couldn’t belive it. It’s the same single standard page image used by the stores to print the fliers they have at their front door, and there really is no reason to use Flash at all to show it on their web site.

Does this make me angry with my iPad? No. It make me angry at web site designers who do stupid things like displaying a jpeg using a hoggish, resource sucking, crash prone bit of software. Useless and stupid!

And that’s all I have to say about the iPad’s lack of Flash. Don’t miss it. On the seemingly rare occasion I’ve noticed something not working as expected, it’s been something I either didn’t need or miss or an instance of stupid people using Flash for things it doesn’t need to be use for anyway.

I for one did not weep to hear Adobe was going to discontinue Flash Mobile, and I wouldn’t weep if Flash went away entirely. Sure, some cool and great things can be done with the software but in reality, most people don’t do cool or great things with it. They just do stupid stuff with it.

So I guess I won’t be seeing the Hobby Lobby weekly specials until I sit at my computer, provided I remember to check then. No loss anyway. Just like those Facebook games, shopping at Hobby Lobby is just another bad habit I need to break.

Last night, Lin and I went to a club downtown for a burlesque show. It was a fund raiser for a local group’s Halloween parade and for the people whose lives were destroyed by the recent wildfires … and it was fun, fun, fun! I’m so glad we got to be there for it!

I was initially stressed out about going. I’m always stressed out by social activities, but it’s even worse when there will be a bunch of people in attendance that my husband knows but I don’t. He’s always talking about me to his friends, and he actually says all kinds of wonderful things about me, which then makes me feel like when I walk in and meet them, they’ll only realize I am not, in fact, a completely amazing goddess full of style and grace and am just a normal, socially awkward, geeky, clumsy, silly middle-aged hausfrau. It’s a completely irrational fear, because in all our years together, I’ve never met one of Lin’s friends who wasn’t an amazingly wonderful human being … or one who I didn’t enjoy getting to know, but irrational fears are, well, irrational, right? Last night was no different. Everyone was so awesome and fabulous, and it didn’t take me long to stop feeling like I was a weirdo or wearing a “loser” sign on my forehead. LOL!

Anyway … I was lucky to have parents who allowed me to be exposed to all manner of creative pursuits as a young girl, and so I’ve been a fan of burlesque shows since I was about 5 years old. Gypsy Rose Lee was one of my idols, for example. So was Sally Rand and her beautiful feather fans. Of course, as I was on my way to being old enough to dance burlesque, burlesque was on it’s way out, but along came Flashdance when I was a teen, and to me, that represented what modern striptease should be and it was, for a while anyway. By the time I entered the world of stripping though, it was nothing like any of its former incarnations, and actual burlesque had yet to have its reawakening. I did my best to keep the “tease” in striptease, but it was a losing battle, and eventually I gave up trying (and then I retired).

But last night’s show was pure win! Burlesque as it was meant to be. Fun, teasing, sweet and sexy at the same time, beautiful to watch. There were pole dancers, and hoop dancers (which I’d not seen before), and fan dancers, and straight up old-time striptease, and performances reminiscent of the Flashdance era, and even some very lovely singing. It was like being transported back into the 30′s and seeing the shows I’d always wished I’d been alive to see … except modern, revitalized, made new. Burlesque and Flashdance together! Also, it’s always wonderful to see people performing and doing something they enjoy doing. Makes it fun for everyone, and as far as I could tell, everyone was having loads of fun last night. There was a lot of love in the house! I’m looking forward to going to more shows! More … more!

It also put the gears in my head spinning about how I used to daydream about being a lovely fan dancer and why couldn’t I do it now? I mean, aside from the fact I’m verging on being past my prime. LOL! But I know that if one of my 40-something friends told me she wanted to learn pole dancing or to do burlesque performances, I would be totally supportive and tell her to go for it, so it seems to me, I should give myself the same permission to do fun and interesting things outside of the “norm” of modern life, right? It’s not like I didn’t used to do whatever I wanted no matter what. Maybe it’s just the thing I need to keep myself from becoming an old fuddy-duddy.

Oddly, I remain completely open minded about others letting their freak flags fly in whatever way they like, and enjoy seeing people do so, but for myself I’ve started to become way more conservative and, well, fuddy-duddy in my thinking. So I’m going to let the thought of having one last go at the world of striptease amble around in the back of my brain for a while. I have ten more paintings to finish first, before I even begin to have time and energy to contemplate doing anything else. Priorities, priorities! I am well into the second year of my five year plan to artistic fame and fortune, and everything is going really well right now. Best not to get distracted by other bright and shiny things!

I really am going to think about it, because I think it would be oh so very fun to do. As much as I enjoyed watching the show, my inner performer was really, really wanting to be on stage. With large feathered fans. And tasseled pasties. LOL! It has, after all, been a while since I did something somewhat wild and crazy. Maybe it’s time!

This summer has sucked. Yes, I don’t write an actual blog post for weeks, and that’s what I start off with. I can’t help it, this summer has well and truly sucked.

It hasn’t sucked entirely, of course. I’ve been working on art like a mad woman. I’ve been catching up on reading my stack of books I didn’t finish last winter. I’ve been doing tons of research on a wide variety of scientific subjects. I’ve read entirely too much legislative paperwork. I’ve watched many, many movies. All of these are activities I enjoy very much, but they are things I am normally found doing during the colder months when I can’t go outside.

Summer is for being out in the yard wearing a wife beater and torn jeans and being covered in sweat and dirt! Summer is for hovering over my garden, slaying fire ants and aphids, and bringing in tasty fresh foods every evening! Summer is for using the macro lens on my camera and taking interesting photos of living things no one else bothers to look at! Summer is for fun in the sun!

Well, there’s been precious little of all that this year. Once the heat really set in and the rain completely stopped, I fought the good fight for a while with my water hose and sprinklers, but I lost, Mother Nature won, and the garden died first followed shortly by everything but the trees and a few of the native plants I let grow wherever they like. There being a point during the summer when I give up on everything and it all goes to hell isn’t anything new. There’s always a couple weeks in August when the heat is too much for all but the hardiest of people and plants, but this year, we reached that point before summer had really started.

I’ve been forcing myself to go outside for at least 30 minutes a day to get some sunlight on my skin, but it’s miserable out there from the moment the sun comes up to well after it goes down. In fact, last night it was still in the 90′s at midnight. At midnight! That’s just insane. So I’m stuck indoors, because even though I love hot weather, my definition of enjoyable hot weather does not include temperatures over 100ºF … and we’ve had 74 days over 100ºF, 22 of which have been over 105ºF! We are breaking every heat record ever set in Austin.

This weekend, the weatherman was promising a break from all this and a 60% chance of rain. I can’t even remember the last time we had anything like real rainfall, so a 60% chance of it almost made me weep with joy. Of course those chances have now been lowered to 20%. My experience this summer with the few days we had a 20% chance of rain has been that we get two and a half seconds of something resembling water droplets falling from the sky, and then it goes right back to being hot and miserable as they quickly evaporate off whatever surface they landed on. If we get that much. Basically, my tears of joy have turned to tears of frustration. We won’t be getting any rain this weekend. If we’re lucky, it’ll only be 100ºF instead of 112ºF, but I’m not even going to count on that happening.

As if being stuck indoors when I’d rather be outdoors being a tomboy and digging in the dirt weren’t bad enough, the drought is bringing the wildlife into the city. We’ve acquired our annual House Possum^† … a big and cranky one this year, and last night I opened the front door and found myself face-to-face with a rather large raccoon. I haven’t seen a raccoon around here since the first few years we lived in this house. I’m not at all happy about the raccoon (though he was a lovely, healthy-looking one). And … we have buzzards too. Buzzards. Ugh. In my heart of hearts, I don’t mind the wildlife, and I do put out water for whatever critters need it (because a living critter is better than a dead one I have to do something about) but still … I’m seeing way too many wild creatures lately.

So yeah, this summer has sucked. It continues to suck. I’m having trouble seeing an end to the sucking. It’s feels like it’s always going to be hot and dry and miserable forever and ever. And this is why I haven’t been bothering to sit down and try to write an actual blog post, because the only thing I really have to talk about is how freaking much this drought has sucked the life out of me and everything around me. Me whining about the stupid weather wouldn’t exactly make for interesting reading on a daily basis, and I haven’t got much else to talk about right now. The drought has made me boring. LOL!

Well, here’s hoping fall comes soon and brings some rain with it, that winter is mild and wet, and that next summer is a WHOLE lot cooler and wetter than this one. Or at least, can I have some kind of weather OTHER than what we have been having? Really, really tired of this hot, dry, fire-producing madness.^††

1. † In fact, I need to sit down and tell the tale of The Undead Possum at some point this week. It’s a laugh riot. [↩]
2. †† Did you know compost heaps can spontaneously burst into flames? Apparently, one of the fires in the area was caused by just that very thing happening. Like I needed one more thing to worry about bursting into flames, now I have to worry about my compost killing us all. [↩]

I normally don’t gripe about family matters on the public blog, but I’m going to break my own rule today … because I am ANNOYED. One of my cousins is getting married this month. Woo hoo! I’m very happy for her. She seems to have found her match.

Here’s where it gets annoying…

The invitation for myself and my husband arrived at my mom’s house, just like every other piece of mail my family members need to send me. Why? They say they don’t know how to address the envelope since Lin and I aren’t married, and we each use our own last names. There are a number of things wrong with this thinking.

Let me explain…

First off, Lin and I are, in fact, married in the eyes of god, society, the state of Texas, and the IRS. Married. Very, very married. We’ve been married officially for a good long time. I know it’s weird we didn’t bother with an over-priced wedding and a fancy reception, but all the same, we are totally 100% legally and rightfully wed. I am sick to death of my family continually not understanding or knowing how to deal with this when it comes up. We’re married. MARRIED. Lin is a husband, and I am a wife. No longer living in sin. Totally married. It’s like they can’t wrap their heads around it because there wasn’t a huge party involving a white dress, cake, and too much booze. Even my own mother will tell people who ask about me that Lin and I aren’t married, or she’ll stumble around the subject trying to explain it somehow, when all she ever has to say is “My daughter lives in Austin with her husband.” Married. So married we’ll be celebrating our twentieth anniversary in a couple of months. That’s pretty damn married.

Secondly, yes … I still maintain my birth name as my own. This is the 21st century, and women have been keeping their own names for decades. It’s not even unusual anymore. I knew early on I wasn’t planning on procreating, and that I was going to be the last twig on my family tree, and so I decided I would carry my own name throughout my life and die with it. I happen to like my name. And now I have this thing going on called “being an artist” and I would like my name to be on my art and not my husband’s name. Nothing at all wrong with his last name. I like it too, and I even use it socially in some circles. We often get wedding invitations and such addressed to Mr. and Mrs. H, and it doesn’t bother me at all. We know who they mean, and I am actually both Mrs. H and Ms. B. It’s not like we are confused about this, and I don’t get why it is so damn confusing to them. What name is on the envelope doesn’t even really matter, so long as the address is correct. I mean, I get mail addressed to Orb, Just Orb, and OrbiZart. Not even the mailman is confused about it. But they freak out about how to address things to both Lin and I, being as we “aren’t married” and have two different last names. So they address it to me only and send it to my mom’s house. You know, like I’m a kid away at college or something.

I sort of get why they freak out, though it’s a totally stupid reason. They are picky as hell about their own names. Once in high school, I misspelled one of my cousin’s names of a Xmas card. You would not believe the level of outrage that ensued. Well, hell! I’d only ever seen her like four times in my whole life at that point, and I had never seen her name written down, because no one ever sent me anything with it on it before. Pardon me for not knowing all the ways a common name can be spelled at the ripe old age of 14. But they are MASSIVELY picky about such things, and I guess this means they assume everyone on the planet is just as outraged about names not being 100% correct or having the proper form or whatever. I’m not. Lin isn’t either. No one else I know manages to develop much outrage about their names and how they are placed on envelopes. This really is one of those things that is so unimportant, it isn’t even on my radar. I outgrew being annoyed by people misspelling my name when I was a kid. I got over it.

But here’s the real hilarity in all this… they misspelled my name on the invitation. No joke. Got Lin’s name right, but misspelled mine. My mind boggles. Mom said I should throw a fit about it at the family Xmas gathering just to prove a point to them about how they are insanely picky about the spelling of their own names, but I have something else I plan to throw a fit about. While we are all gathered around stuffing our faces with Xmas goodies, I’m going to explain once and for all that Lin and I are incredibly married and how to properly address things to people who don’t share the last name but do share a life together. Not that anyone will pay any attention to any of it. It’s interesting that their excuse for sending the wedding invitation to my mom’s house was that they didn’t know how to put both names on the envelope, but yet they did, in fact, put both names on the envelope. In other words, the problem was actually that they didn’t have my address. No matter how many times I and my mom give them my address, phone number, and email addy, they never seem to actually hold onto it or write it in something like an address book … because they just don’t really care enough, I guess. I’m actually fine with that too, because people who are incapable of acknowledging a marriage that has already lasted twenty years are people I can’t waste too much mental energy on. They are how they are. I can’t imagine any of them ever changing.

To any family members who might one day find this rant, it is entirely possible I am talking about you. Go have a seat somewhere comfy with a glass of your favorite beverage, and contemplate whether or not anything I said applies to you and your actions. If not, woo hoo! If so, maybe make a conscious choice to a) accept the fact that I am a married woman and have been for ages, and b) it would be nice if things you want to mail to me were actually sent to my home. Or just keep doing things they way you always have, because I seriously have given up on trying to make my point about both these issues. I’m just using you to make a point to anyone else in my life who may be having the same sort of mental crisis about my marriage or my name … and who can still be helped to understand. After twenty years, I have to assume that my own family members who are incapable of coming to terms with these two things are a lost cause. Sorry.

Yesterday, I wheeled the trash bin out to the curb at 6 am, made coffee for Lin, and then went back to bed for a few hours. I obviously knew it was Thursday, since I remembered the trash needed to be taken out, but by the time I woke up the second time, I had it in my mind it was Friday. I was actually quite happy it was Friday, because I was looking forward to sleeping in a bit and being a lazy slug with my husband. So I made a shopping list, went shopping, and started planning my Friday night activities. Alas, it wasn’t Friday, and I didn’t really notice that until the DVR started recording the Daily Show at 10 pm.

It’s not the first time I thought I was living a different day this week either. I’ve been having trouble keeping track of the days. Not in a “you need to see a brain doctor” kind of way, but in a “every day is just another hot and miserable day like the one before and it’s all so boring” kind of way. It’s just been day after day after day of sunny weather with temperatures well over 100 degrees. I can’t spend much time outside, because I can feel the UV radiation damaging my DNA and frying my flesh, and that leads to a lot of sitting around reading and working on art … and moping about the fact I can’t spend time outside in the sunlight. The days start blurring together after a while, and since I don’t have a time-card to punch, even the hours start getting blurry too.

This drought and the associated heat-wave is sucking the life out of me. It’s sucking the life out of Texas too. This non-stop sunny and hell-hot weather is seriously just miserable. It feels like life is moving in slow motion … and time has gone wishy-washy. We need some rainy days! The occasional exciting storm! Something other than the same damn hot, dry crap we’ve had for so many days now I can’t recall. Winter is supposed to be the season I can’t spend much time outside and the days seem endless and all the same and I sit around moping about being bored! Not summer!

I’ve been working on a bunch of art. This is a good thing. What I need to do now is start finishing some art. Lin and I were talking about last year’s work the other night, and in the course of that conversation, it came up that he thought I wasn’t being as productive this year as last year. Actually, I have, it’s just that not much of it is finished yet. Of course at this time last year, not much of anything was finished yet either. I seem to start a lot of stuff at the beginning of a year and then finish it all up in one huge swoop at the end of summer. Thing is, there’s usually a month or two where I am too busy out in the garden or having fun outside to work on the art at all, and that’s what leads to the mad rush of working on things and finishing them up when the August heat sets in and I can’t be outside as much. I start art, take a break from art, and then finish art. It’s a pattern I finally see in how I work.

But this year the August heat set in sometime in June. Just when my garden should have been ramping up into a full-time activity it started dying from the heat. Just when I would normally be putting the artworks aside to spend time sitting on patios drinking frosty beverages or hanging out in parks for hours on end too. So I haven’t really had a break from the art this year. I just keep working on it and starting new projects, because I don’t feel ready to finish the ones I have already started. But being stuck in the house so much, it’s hard to stop making art and do something else. What else is there to do that does involved leaving the house and being outside? Not much. At least not much that doesn’t cost money.

Anyway, everything is so hot and dry and boring! I hate not being outside during my favorite season, but I’m sure I’d hate sunburn, heatstroke, and/or skin cancer even more. You don’t even want to know what the UV index has been around here lately. Who knew the scale went to 11?!

I hear there’s some kind of tropical storm headed our way, but the weatherman says we only have a 20% chance of getting any rain. In weatherman speak, that’s him trying to give us hope. In my experience, a 20% chance of rain means we won’t be getting any rain. I hope I’m wrong, but I’m betting I’m not. It’s really getting pretty depressing, but maybe the temperature won’t get over 100 degrees today, which would be a nice change. I wouldn’t bet on that happening either.

Can you tell the weather is getting me down? It is.

But since I thought yesterday was Friday, I now have to do Friday all over again without any of the activities I had planned for Friday. Some people would say “Yeah! A whole extra day!” I am not one of those people. I slept in today, not so much as a choice but just as something that happened. That ate up the morning. Now I just have to find something to do to fill the afternoon. I don’t feel like reading or watching TV or hanging out online. I actually feel like working on art, but seriously … I NEED AN ART BREAK.

Maybe I’ll go to Target and look at toasters and vacuum cleaners (and iPads). Maybe I’ll sit here reading some more news until I am certain the world is totally going to hell in a hand basket and then go work on art. Or maybe I’ll just take another extended nap. More likely though is that I will sit here playing endless hands of solitaire and being both bored and depressed about the state of my existence.

Yes, aren’t I a fun person today!