It's all happiness and friendliness and niceness until someone jumps off a bridge...

We went driving around southern Texas last weekend, which is why my blog post had to post itself. Corpus Christi, Palacios, Victoria, Rockport, Port Aransas...they didn't seem to have quite as many crazy signs as Houston, but it was very, very pretty.

And they are HAPPY down there! Practically ecstatic, really.

The hairdressers are happy:


The plumbers are happy:


In Rockport, there was happy pill art:


(ok, I'm not sure how many of those are actual happy pills, but I'm calling them that to suit my purposes)

Even the tacos were laughing!!!


And there was friendliness too:


(They weren't actually all that friendly if you stopped in to ask directions.)


With all all that happiness and friendliness, it's a wonder they had to remind people not to commit suicide.


But, that's the way it was! Happy, mostly friendly, extremely beautiful, and with only the occasional reminder that you might choose at any moment to jump off a bridge.

Happy, friendly, non-bridge-jumping weekend everyone!

If you're looking for me, I'll just be having fun with Ramen noodles. Or...y'know...being wiped out in the Time of Wrath. Something.

I found the old age home for retired mailboxes:



And I've been looking for magazines ever since Arizaphale alerted me to the existence of "Bacon Busters":


My grocery store didn't have Bacon Busters, but it did have this:


I didn't even know you could HAVE fun with Ramen Noodles. I thought it was just something college-aged kids eat instead of food upon running out of grocery money.

On the other hand, a fun zone at the pharmacy seems logical enough...if you're into that kind of thing.



Signs can be SO bossy. Like this one, ordering people to stop suffering:

Because everyone goes to a reception hall to suffer, and it must be stopped!

Apparently.

If things go as planned my computer should be posting this all by it's lonesome while I am nowhere around.

So that's pretty much it except for this:


I don't even know what to say about this one. The math alone is astounding. And I truly appreciate the visual aid. I'm always kind of lost without a time line.

Hope everyone has had a great weekend and I hope your not caught up in that first tribulation thing. A quarter of the population sounds like kind of a lot.

While I Wasn't Looking, Luxury Was Redefined to Include Trailer Homes

I didn't really know if I actually had enough silly in me this week for a blog post. I sort of was wondering if I'd just slap up a few more photos from Israel and call it a day.

But then suddenly last night I saw this sign:


And I thought,

"They've redefined luxury to mean a dilapidated motel in a questionable part of town? How 1984 of them!"

I had to go read Wikipedia and of course it turned out I was mixing up doublespeak and newspeak.

And THEN I saw this sign in the bathroom of the Shakespeare Pub:


And I thought,

"I NEVER hold down flashers in public restrooms! I'm obviously not doing my part to keep the bars, clubs, and music venues of Houston safe from perverts!"

Also this week I found out that royalty resides in trailer parks:


I thought kings' dwellings would be more ornate. But then I remembered that luxury had been redefined.

My mom and 10 year old cousin and I went on a geocaching expedition that included walking through here:

Instead of those giant windows, one of those windows was replaced by this:

Lo and behold, no one was sleeping. Or trespassing. Except for me, of course.

But another window was replaced by this sign:

And if I had a scratch and sniff blog, you would find that the level of compliance was not nearly so great for the polite, almost plaintive request.

And so now we know why so many signs are written in the imperative.

And then last but not least, I saw this book:

And so what can I really have to say about my week except that the silly, ridiculous and even absurd is alive and well.

Thanks to everyone for the condolences and I hope everyone's having a good weekend.

A not funny post

My grandfather passed away yesterday evening. It's okay, really, because living on this planet for 101 years is enough to make anybody tired. But still.

Just before Father's Day, this year:


Way back when (he's on the right, the closest one to the camera):

With my boy and my nephew, 1998:

With my sweet pea, 1995. Ok, maybe I have a something a little funny today after all:


With my aunt:

With my dad and my grandmother:
I'm having a hard time ending this, because he was a hard guy to figure out. So let's end like this:

In loving memory of Elmer, April 1, 1910 to July 8, 2011. Father of Lynne and Donnie. Grandfather of Brad, Kathy, Adam, Bernard, Jill, and David. Great grandfather to Kimberly, Megan, Zach, Josh, Cassie, Rex, Jared, Leo, Nicholas, and Felix.

And hey! My new layout even did a neat thing with the quote. So there we go.

Hi! I'm The Pot! Or maybe I'm The Kettle. I get confused. Maybe I'm having an identity crisis AND I'm a piece of kitchenware.

A belated birthday present - Sweet Pea has been asking me forever and a half to do a "Non-Clever-Business-Names" post. I decided a clever vs. non-clever would a fun way to do it, but the problem is, clever business names are a little scarce.

NON-clever business names are a dime a dozen though. Misspelling the business name does not necessarily mean the name of the business is clever. Or creative. Or Quee-ative either.



I know! I know! The name of my blog is misspelled but it's something funny my nephew said. I'm not really the pot calling the kettle black. Or maybe I am.

I have to sneak in an Israel photo here. It's hard to tell if this is a purposeful misspelling or a translation error, since Hebrew doesn't really have letters for vowels:

Translations themselves can be amusing sometimes. Would you rather leave the airplane in English, or in French? Because if you're trying to leave in French, don't be making a right turn!

This sign in English asks you not to loiter, which as I understand it can be a solo activity. But in Spanish, it technically only asks you not to congregate, so does that mean if you only speak Spanish, you're allowed to loiter if you're by yourself?

Totally unrelated to anything except for sneaking in photos of Israel, here's a flag in Jerusalem:

Last but not least, here's my boy. He loves me, because I bought him Mexican food.

But he hates me, because Don't I EVER stop taking his picture? EVER?!?!

He doesn't really hate me. He's a good guy, that boy-o-mine.

Also, my blog pictures are small again and I'm not the least bit pleased about it. I might have to change my whole template. But, as Janet at Of Cats & Cardstock sometimes says, you can "click to biggefy" if you are so inclined. At least I think you can.

(Update - I figured out how to get big pictures that don't look icky! But I'm not going to redo all the pictures on this post, just some of them. And also, there's no way to "biggefy" the small ones. I hope I didn't waste you a click!)