Towse: views from the hill

Something for that someone who has everything or maybe something for Mom that isn’t a plaster handprint or copper-plated baby shoes.

Pirolette = major coolness

$149.95 + S&H is pricey but what a conversation piece!

I’m not a spend-your-money-on-shooz-or-fashionable-bags sort of person.

Howsomever, I did spend some money on these.

Made With Molecules had a booth at AAAS this year.

I was the kid who followed the Derby, the Preakness, the Belmont.

I was the kid who read horse stories.

I was the kid who grew up to know who Russell Baze was and why I should care.

I was the kid who talked Dad, sweetheart that he was, into buying a certain brand of pipe tobacco so I could choose the best name for a Derby winner’s colt or filly and win it for my very own.

(and I promised him that should I win I’d somehow be able to feed the critter, exercise it, take care of it …)

He indulged me each year for a few months while the contest ran.

Sure, Sal. Maybe sure, you’ll win the pony. I’ll smoke whatever pipe tobacco I need to smoke to get the chits you need to enter the contest to get your Derby winner’s foal.

I learned they’d put Barbaro down while we were out on the road today, listening to the news in the car.

I didn’t burst into tears. Honest I didn’t. I’m grown up now, you know.

Damn.

I didn’t burst into tears until tonight when I saw Asha‘s clip.

Damn. OK?

Just damn. Just … damn.

Epiphany. Tomorrow, the tree comes down.

Today, we slept in, shipped a huge box to Boston, visited me mum and went to a party at the Duke of Edinburgh (a pub where my stepdaughter once tended bar) to hang out with people we worked with twenty years ago when we worked at a company that no longer exists. The crowd was bigger than last year’s, but there were still plenty of no-shows. I saw people I was pleased no end to see, whom I hadn’t seen in far too long, and I saw people whom I’d seen New Year’s Eve. (I was pleased to see them too.)

A good time was had by all who attended. The Founding Father showed up to schmooze with former employees and to order a round of drinks for everyone. I ate greasy calamari and onion rings and drank Murphy’s stout, and wished I’d just stuck to the Murphy’s.

Now, I tuck in. Tomorrow, the tree.

Milady the Most Honourable Sal the Sardonic of Throcking by Hampton

My Peculiar Aristocratic Title is: Most Noble and Honourable the Sardonic of Throcking by Hampton Get your Peculiar Aristocratic Title

Allz I said was that my name was Sal and I was a grrrl, for petra’s sake. …

Thanks, um, Your Most Serene Highness Lord Don the Recumbent of Chalmondley St Peasoup

[ low bow ]