45 Comments on “My Brain is Mashed Potatoes Today, So Here is a Picture of a Spiderweb in the Wheel Well of a ’29 Ford”

1. I wish I had a time machine like you, John. I could take cool pictures like this all the time.

2. Today must be the day for mashed potato brain. Unfortunately it’s not going over very well at work.

3. I woke up feeling good today. This is a change, and a trend indicator. Life is good.

4. My 2-year old was awake from 1:30 to 4:30 last night, so I definitely know the feeling. That’s not your Ford, is it? Obviously it had been sitting there for a while…

5. rockin in the free world! Montana! thanks for askin –

6. Mashed potatoes are delicious! *grabs the salt and pepper*

7. Not bad, thank you for asking. Had a good work out yesterday which was helpful. Have the third season of Game of Thrones recorded last night so my wife and I will be able to enjoy that over the next week. And I am trying to figure out what to read next. A buddy of mine enjoyed the saga of the seven suns by Kevin Anderson; anyone have thoughts on that? Any other suggestions for something enjoyable from anyone? I obviously like John’s work.

   My biggest concern right now is trying to help my son integrate into 2d grade. We moved from the East Coast to the West Coast and he entered school a month late- hard to do at that age. He has such a great imagination and is an expert at traditional “play.” It just takes him a bit longer to get in the academic groove. I can’t wait until he is old enough to read young adult sci fi/fantasy. I think it will open up a new world for him and help encourage more and better reading.

   I am most excited about seeing my freshman daughter play her first soccer game this Saturday after a long lay off with a knee injury that culminated in orthoscopic surgery to remove the fat pad in her knee. She loves the game so much and I love watching her play.

   Hope everyone has a great Friday.

8. I am shiny. I saw a neat picture of a spiderweb in a 1929 Ford.

9. Had my first bike ride today at age 53. (Actually, it’s a “three-wheel bike” according to the manufacturer’s description. Isn’t that a tricycle?)

   Never learned to ride as a kid, but need exercise these days and walking kills my heels, so my wife got it for me as an early birthday present. Down to the credit union, the post office and home again, in the proper bike lanes. Feeling a little tired but proud…

10. Nice jalopy. Nice spiders.

    I’m good. Thanks for asking. Getting over a demon cold which has laid me flat for 4 days. Finally finished revising my novel and it’s off to the copyeditor for some editing fun! Can’t wait to get it back and drop it on the masses.

    Hope you’re day gets you a less mashed pertates kind of brain. I recommend TV and video games.

11. Mmm, tasty!

12. My Brain is also mash taters today! I decided to quit drinking coffee since it keeps me up at night. I was only drinking 7 cups a day! Bah! That should have no effect! Brain no workie! Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

13. There’s no spider in that web. where is the spider? man, I can almost feel it on the back of my neck. Ever get the feeling you’re being watched?

14. Does that car still run? I saw a Ford Pinto driving on the streets of Fort Wayne. It had antique plates and looked as new as a car older than me can look. Somebody either cared a great deal about that car, or opened the garage for the first time in 35 years and realized that they bought a car during the disco era.

15. @Not that Frank: Be careful coming on and off curbs — those things will tip over on you, and man is that embarrassing!

16. Relaxing! Recovering from 12 hour night shifts. Usually takes a couple of days to feel “normal” again. It’s nice and overcast here, feels like Fall. Finally!

17. It’s been a long week. We live in Houston, and we left Monday to drive to Harlingen (waaaaaaay south, Rio Grande Valley area). Tuesday we drove to San Antonio. Wednesday we drove to Austin. Just got back home from Austin maybe a half-hour ago. The not-fun part was that we were doing all this driving around because hubby’s a “non-attorney hearing representative”, he goes in front of a federal judge to try to explain why his claimant should receive disability benefits. The system is almost totally computerized now. So hubby shows up at the Austin hearing office yesterday, only to discover their computers are on the fritz, IT guys have no idea what’s wrong, no timetable on how to fix it. No hearing. Back to hotel. Hubby shows up again today for what should have been another hearing, only to find out that the computers still aren’t working. We coulda been home two days earlier if someone had bothered to contact hubby’s office to tell him about the computer issues. Le sigh. At least I dozed most of the drive home (don’t worry, hubby was the one doing the actual driving).

18. Tired! My head decided it was time to wake up after five hours of sleep. My body is protesting.

19. Aakkk, Robert Enders! Stop that — I have no wish to realize that a car my best friend was driving in high school is now considered a ‘classic’.

    Yesterday was full of weirdos and people behaving badly. I hope today will be better.

20. Had a wonderful morning. Got to leave the doors and windows open, temp was 72 F. But it will hit 100+ before noon. That is Phoenix.

21. I broke a drinking glass today trying to save a beautiful black and yellow garden spider. The arachnophobes gathered on the deck with me wanted to stomp him. I attempted to scoop him into my empty iced tea glass, so I could let him go somewhere safe. Misconstruing my benevolence, he decided to charge out onto my hand. My plan did not include a contingency for falling under attack. I had no choice but to fling him and the glass intro the yard. Now I owe my host a new set of iced tea glasses. No good deed goes unpunished.
    Otherwise, though, it’s been a pretty good day. Thanks for asking.

22. I was fine until I started dwelling on mashed potatoes. Thanks a lot.

23. Doing the standard, “Summer is almost over? What happened? Where did it go? Come back!” thing.

24. Struggling with ‘second book syndrome’ and 10 days left until deadline. Aaaaacccchhhh!!! (any advice?)

25. Sigh. Mine aren’t even mashed potatos, but those boxed flakes that someone put too much liquid in.

26. I’m jet-lagged big time. But it’s great to be home.

27. What a great phrase. And everyone has wonderful comments. It is a good day for mashed potato brains.

28. I was fine till suddenly my web browsing was interrupted by an actual web. DO NOT WANT.

    I had a kitty on my lap for a couple of hours, with his biggest purr.

29. My kids had a PD day today, so I took them with my to the university to attend classes with me. My kids have a strange idea of what a day off means, what can I say?

    While there my 9 YO daughter gave an origami workshop to the students in printmaking.

    Then I came home and had a longish nap.

    So it was a good day and I’m feeling happy about it, I would feel happier if I didn’t have to go back in to campus on the weekend to finish some work, but that is the life of the “mature student” who has kids.

30. I am ded from tired, having gone from working 5-10 hrs per week to working back-to-back 45-hour weeks. Glad to have the money (TUITION!!) but OMG I don’t have 2 live brain cells to rub together and my everything hurts.

    (BTW, I wish I had a Twitter account in order to suggest that if you did write a book of advice to young single Jewish women, you could call it “101 Uses for a Spare Goy”.

    See above comment re brain capacity.)

31. I’m two days away from my due date.

    Aaaauuuuuugh hurry up and be born child!

    :'(

32. Oh, boy, do I understand mashed potato brains. Had that all day yesterday.

    Today is much better. Of relevance here, I finished reading “Redshirts” today. Actually, I finished reading it about an hour ago. I can see why it won the Hugo. Wonderful book that I’ll probably be bugging everybody I know to read, just so I can discuss it with them.

33. If the web is still there later you might try retaking the photo after spritizing it with water. It creates a nice effect, especially in the right light.

    Of course, I would’ve torn it down with a long stick and then taken 2 showers. But that’s just me.

34. I am lamenting the state of my country (we just elected an dropkick conservative Down Under…) so spider pictures are a nice change of pace :)

35. Got rejected for a job I had applied for, because I’m a woman and they wanted a man. They’re not allowed to write that in the job ad, here in Denmark, so I didn’t know and therefore applied for a job I had no chance at, without knowing it.

    Applied for a job doing customer service in Scotland, to get more relevant job experience. I’ve had similar jobs before, but that’s 6 years ago, so it’s not recent enough for it to count. I don’t know how long I’ll stay there, if I get the job – might have a chance to work myself to a better position in the same company or something. Only time will tell and I like to keep my options open. Oh – and I just found out that I have to give a 3 months notice on my flat, before leaving, unless I’m lucky and they manage to rent it out before that – which they will try, if I ask them to. Well – just some practical things to be taken care of, if I get the job. Nothing that can’t be solved.

    So – my Friday had me being nervous, annoyed, hopeful and speculating where in the world I’ll end up. Who knows?

36. My team (The Fremantle Dockers) just won their first ever semi-final in the Australian Football League. They play in their first ever AFL Grand Final next week. I’m currently living in South Fremantle, and the town was just about painted purple from excitement for the semi (the team’s colours are purple and white. And green. Don’t ask).

    For the next week, I’m going to be thinking I’m living inside a grape. But it’ll be worth it!

    Carna Dockers!!!!!

37. Mashed potatoes are delicious! *grabs the salt and pepper*

    All we want to do is eat your brains.

38. Got about 5 pages of notes made last night for what might be the next writing project. Rough story arc, and brief notes on world background and character descriptions. A great title, I think: Seven Enemies At My Wedding.

    I’m enjoying writing fiction again, after a years-long hiatus. An unexpected benefit of breaking my arm last December and being off work for months. Trying to keep the streak going now that I’ve returned to work.

39. I just got scheduled this week for some rather exotic and scary back surgery (which involves two 4-hour procedures two days apart, eek!), which on one hand I’m looking forward to because I am sick and tired of pain and being debilitated all the time, but on the other hand — two surgeries in three days? Eek! So I’m currently trying to work around the rather largish lump that’s taken up residence in my stomach. At least I decided this was a good time to finally start watching Doctor Who, so that’s helped a LOT to take my mind off myself. But I don’t think I’m really going to breathe easy until it’s all over. Even though I have a truly *fabulous* doctor who I trust implicitly, it’s still a Big Deal. I’m knitting him socks as a thank-you present for taking my pain away; that’s a good thing, right?

40. I got that going on in the driver side mirror of my Geo Prizm.

41. Got visited for the second time in two weeks by the “I’ve eaten your Internet connection” demon; totally unfair as I’ve already had to put up with unfeasibly crap rented accommodation and lying former landlords this week. However, I have once more conquered said demon (fortunately as I have a couple of translation jobs to deliver on Monday morning) and am happy to be here admiring spiders’ webs.

    No explanation about the car though? Where is it? Why is it? Boo!

42. Oh and @ Not that Frank – well done you!

43. Not mashed potatoes, but baked… plus four (thinish) leeks (rescued from the compost bin of the Community Gardens where I have a plot), some mushrooms, chicken stock, and white sauce (flour, chicken fat, butter, & olive oil — it was a complex fixer-upper) that turned into a rather good cream soup. And that ’29 Ford is great — I was less than a year old, then, and not yet able to appreciate either the car or the spider & web — but in highshool an affluent friend had Wheels like that, to my advantage. (Now that you mention it, no, I never managed to Make Out in a rumble-seat, but did get several rides to the fine (albeit grungy) used-book stores on Main Street in Los Angeles.)

44. I am relaxed, thank you.

    Sitting here in the gathering room of the B&B, a small fire crackling in the fireplace, with a glass of local wine at my elbow, Spent the day rambling around in the chilly wind, reveled in the early color in the leaves, rode the ferry to the island and back, took a couple hundred photos (a few even worth keeping), and in just a little bit, we’re going to amble up the road to sup at a tiny little hole-in-the-wall restaurant with half a dozen tables and amazing Mexican food.

    Tiny vacations are wonderful. Tiny vacations stolen before medical stuff descends again in another week or two are a gift from the gods. I am very relaxed, and very happy.

45. We always get lots of spiders in the summer here (Seattle). There’s this big, fat one at the entryway, her web high up in the corner, all polite like. You have to understand, some spiders have no concern and plant their webs across the door or between two trees that border the walkway. Just plain rude.

    I do wonder about that big, fat spider up in the corner though. We had one just like her last Fall. She stayed there until her end. Put her eggs all safe by the entryway light, then sat in her web until the cold came for her. Now I wonder, could this be her daughter? That would cool.