Purple Rain (I apologize in advance for getting that song stuck in anyone's head)

I was seduced by a little drink last night. The same drink I made fun of about 6 months ago. That came back to bite me in the butt, or rather, this morning started to pound me repeatedly between the eyes.

This drink is called Purple Rain. Yes, my friends, the name is what put me off in the first place, too. The not-too-subtle reference to a Prince song made the drink sound suspect. I should have remained suspicious.

I'd had a beer and a cape codder and had a sip of this particular beverage that someone else had ordered. And I liked it. So I ordered one.

First, you have to understand the contents of this beverage. It's a slightly modified long island iced tea. As you probably well know, there is no tea in the long island version. There is a little spash of coca cola, however. The Purple Rain takes out this, the only ingredient of a long island that does not contain alcohol, and replaces it with a yummy Chambord liqueur. So we have ice, liquor and liqueur in a nice, big 16 oz. glass. And although it contains this exhorbitant amount of alcohol, it tastes like candy. Yes, very, very much like liquid candy.

After consuming about half of this drink, I suddenly had the urge to dance. Yes, me, the one who does not in any way like to move and shake like the rest of them (I think I've heard line that somewhere). Fortunately, I still had enough sense to know that this was an unusual urge. I remembered that what throws me with dancing is not the arm and head movements, but what to do with my feet, and contented myself to grooving while still sitting in my chair. (I know, kind of anticlimactic.) It is also fortunate that I refrained from making even one comment on Alec Baldwin.

So, yes, I have a pounding headache and if I had any cookies to toss, that's what I'd be doing right now.

Shuffleboard, Pinochle and Big People Trikes

I never knew what I was in for when we took a trip to Florida. I had visions of the ocean, sand, Disney World and sunshine. Maybe a Mickey mouse shirt and some oranges for souveniers. What I didn't anticipate was a pool with restrictions on wearing sunscreen, getting whooped at cards and shuffleboard and evening tricycle rides while listening to gators grunt.

I was also surprised by the live Discovery Channel view of a very large fish being swooped up and eaten by a heron about 20 feet away from me.

By the way, Disney's Animal Kingdom park is sweet, even for adults.

Dumb Ass Sticks

I post this knowing it will probably offend most or all of my friends:

I am going to start calling cigarettes "dumb ass sticks". A couple of people I know fondly call them nature sticks. But, in order to think that smoking cigarettes is a good idea or an acceptable activity, you either have to be not just suicidal but also masochistic, wishing for a slow, painful death while your loved ones grieve before your eyes, wanting to leave spouses and children alone to deal with the longer lasting consequences of your behavior, or you have to be a complete fucking dumbass. I guess a possible third option is that you grew up in the fucking woods and packs of cigarettes with no warning labels rained from the sky and you decided to fucking light the things on fire and stick them in your mouth. Since beginning the previous sentence, I decided that that scenario would also fall under the category of "complete fucking dumbass".

I'm not particularly looking forward to watching any of you die of cancer or emphysema or heart disease.

Decaffeinated Day because of Bad Brie

I did not have a single cup of coffee yesterday. I didn't even want one.

That probably has less to do with me having controlled my addiction to coffee and more to do with getting food poisoning from brie that had been left in the fridge a few days too long. I just couldn't resist having some with melba toast. My reasoning was that sometimes they age cheese for years to give it more flavor. Damn, that was stupid.

This is why I believe in birth control...

So, yesterday I was just minding my own business at work, being fairly productive, when a woman walks into my office with two children ages 1 1/2 and 3 and says, "I'm here to sign the papers."

Me: "You mean the ones that you insisted that the only time you could come to sign them was at 3:15 this afternoon... (pause to look at watch) ... exactly five hours and twenty minutes from now?"

Lady: "Yeah, those ones. I left my other two children who are both under the age of six at the doctor's office, so could you please hurry?"

Me: "Well, let me see if I can find the file and make the necessary changes that I was planning on making in a liesurely manner sometime before lunch."

While I went off to find said file, she set her two cute big-eyed little children down on the ground. I returned with the file, and after she looked at the documents she insisted that I change the wording of two answers before she would sign the document. She proceeded to peer over my shoulder and make formatting suggestions about margins and punctuation while I revised the document and ignored her yammering. Her 1 1/2 year old son proceeded to crawl under the back of my desk and turn the power strip for my computer off.

Lady: "Oh, he does that to me all the time at home. I'm sorry."

Me: (silence)

In the ten minutes that these two children were in the office, they ran around the entire place pushing buttons to the following effects:

- turning the speaker phone on and off several times so that we could all hear the lovely and very loud dial tone
- sending a blank fax to God knows who
- starting a dictation tape
- turning my computer off two more times.

To my relief, the Beasts (in this term I include mother and children) finally left. Five minutes later they returned.

Mom Beast: "Are you missing these?" She dangles my keys in front of my face.

Me: "Uh, yeah."

Mom Beast: "My son took them. Oh, he also stole a magazine. He liked the Mercedes ad on the back cover."