Leannderthal

Last night Mark and I met my sister Jane and her husband Don at the Tangent Gallery/Hasting Street Ballroom for their Damned Art Show.  It gave me a chance to wear my sexy dress and scary cape.  The show was full of macabre, dark pieces, some of them quite wonderful, many of them quite disturbing.  A lot of photography about violence against women, I don’t mind the bondage but looking at bloody women posed as corpses over and over wears on you.  There were all kinds of creepy, though, including women and octopuses, in very odd ways, (use your imagination) and beautiful photographs of smoke.

The best part of the show was the people watching.   Everyone was encouraged to come dressed in devil wear (after all, it is Devil’s Night in Detroit), and many interpretations were wonderful.  There were very sexy women with flashing horns, an occasional tail, phenomenal tattoos, and lots of red and black.  One child of the night looked like a survivor of the atomic bomb, another beautiful man had a sullen look and little brown horns coming out of his forehead that appeared to be quite real.  You were never sure what you were going to meet coming around the corner.

We didn’t stay the whole night, so we didn’t see a lot of the entertainment, but we did see the wonderful Dixon play his violin while a beautiful seductress wearing only two pieces of tape, a loincloth, and a thin layer of mud, slithered out from the backroom and seduced the audience with a long winding liquid dance.  I’d seen the women of Torch with a Twist dance with snakes, but this is the first time I’ve seen a woman become a snake.

  Oh, and what did I wear?  My party dress.  Yes, of course it still fits.  No, it’s not tight at all.  Breathing is overrated, anyway.  If only I had horns.

We had a Halloween block party Sunday, here’s what you missed if you weren’t there.

Many small monsters of all types.

Everyone won the costume contest!

Minnie Mouse sold raffle tickets.

Lots,

and lots,

of scary decorations.

Free music!

Excellent cupcakes.  (I’m talking about the food, here, don’t get any ideas.)

Is Christy wearing a costume, or is she just dressed up?

The train was popular.

All aboard!

The scary skateboarders demonstrated some moves.

Four of the hard working folks that put this shindig on.  Lets give them a hand!

Lets give them a couple of hands!

Gone like my last paycheck gone gone away
Gone like the car I wrecked gone gone away
Gone like a fifth of gin gone gone away
Gone like the shape I’m in gone gone away
My baby’s gone away

John Hiatt was, of course, talking about his baby, not about my hard drive.   The lyrics of this song keep going through my head, though.  All the emails, all the email addresses, all the community fliers, all the financial information, all the forms, all the bookmarks, all the stuff we kept on the computer without backing up, all gone.  It doesn’t feel that bad, actually, kind of cleansing.  There will, of course, be much cursing as I figure out all the stuff we’ve lost, but we will replace it with better and more thought out things.  And who knows, we might even start backing up important stuff.

I would like to gratefully acknowledge both Scott and Kari who helped us get this monster back up to speed.  It feels very good to be blogging again.  I’ll catch you up on what’s been happening later, suffice to say I’m just happy to be back.  And do me a favor, will you?  Don’t tell me you didn’t notice I hadn’t been posting.  It’s a fantasy I have that you are all out there in cyberspace gnashing your teeth waiting for my next wonderful post.  When the computer died I thought I’d call people to let them know, but I imagined the conversation going like this:  “Did you try to email me?  Because if you did my computer is dead.  Oh, you didn’t, OK.”  Then calling the next person “Did you try to email me?  Oh, you didn’t.” and on and on.  Many bloggers put a counter on their blog to see how many readers they have, I’m afraid if I did that I’d be celebrating each one.  “I’m up to four now, and once I had five!”  I prefer to live in denial, believing that there are hundreds hanging on my every word.  Thanks for keeping me delusional.

We have a mole problem at the new house, there are mole trails everywhere.  The ground is squishy from them, and it’s hard to walk.  To alleviate the problem, poison pellets that taste like worms have been put in the mole holes.  How would you like that job?  “Here, taste these poison pellets and tell me if they taste like worms?”  Anyway, it has got me feeling bad for the moles.

Run for it, moles!!  There’s a better world out there!

In front of Rhythm and Harmony, who don’t understand why they have the wrong food.  They like the crunchy stuff, and they are getting the wet stuff this morning.  Sorry, cats, but I haven’t made it to the grocery store.

Where I Stand Sunday is an ongoing photo essay examining the different places Lynn Krawczyk spends her life standing. Too often we take for granted the everyday places we spend our lives walking on. If you’d like to join her by posting a photo on Sunday of places you’ve been on your blog/photo hosting site/website, leave a comment on her Sunday posts telling her where she can find you/your photo and she’ll add a link to her sidebar so others can find you. I am one of those that Lynn has badgered into joining her, I have changed it to “where I stood”, because right now I’m sitting in front of the computer, not standing anywhere.

This is our good friend Sharon.  We hadn’t seen Sharon in quite a while, until Thursday night when she called with David Sedaris tickets.  Sharon is an antiques dealer.  She has two houses, one in Lansing and one in Canton.  She needs to sell the beautiful old Canton house.  But first, she needs to sell the many things she has stored in the house in Canton.  Mark and I went on a tour of the house yesterday.  These are some of the wonderful things Sharon has.  We don’t know yet when the sale will be, I will keep you posted.

Oh, and I have to let you know I’ve been immortalized!  Pattie has done a charcoal portrait of me and Leslyn, from one of the photos my friend Greg Baise took!  See her post about it here.

… is coming along fine.

The blue and green bedroom is now a creamy yellow, with clean curtains.

The living room has also been cleaned.

The garage now has a window.

The slightly blurry, happy Mark.

In other news, our friend Sharon called yesterday to say she and a friend were going to see author David Sedaris in Ann Arbor, and they had a couple of extra tickets, did we want to go?  Yes, we most certainly did.  It was a wonderful evening of very funny stories.   Sedaris read a couple of his new stories, and also from his diary.  He has kept a diary for over 30 years.  He talked a lot about how much he enjoys his book tours.  He makes up strange questions to ask people he meets while signing books.  Out of nowhere he asked one woman when she last touched a monkey, and her response was “Oh, can you smell it on me?”