I only have time for a quickie Richard Armitage…

What can I say?  I’m a total sucker for the naughty double entendre…and apparently I’m in familiar company…

 

One of the greats….
Source

Life has been particularly jammed this week….prepping for ShowBiz’ Solo and Ensemble performances on Saturday (which required finding a Ragtime era costume) and Mini Me’s youth group outing on Saturday (which might require a dose of “Mother’s Little Helper”) has kept me jumping.  But that’s all par for the course.

It’s work that has really been the time and energy sucker.  Apparently, EVERYONE, in EVERY department has had their underpants on fire all week, which has resulted in my frequent state of

often accompanied by rocking in place…

Fortunately, I’ve not been going it alone.  In fact, I’ve had some royal protection stationed at sentry:

Chibi Thorin has been perched on the keyboard to ward off trespassers.

I was feeling quite secure under his furrowed brows…until I relocated to my secondary office this morning that is.  Something seems to have caught Chibi Thorin’s eye…

It’s a tough gig balancing on that “Arkenstone”

I think he might actually take an axe swing at me if I try to move him now  🙂

Happy Weekend Armitageworld!

SpReAd The Love Children’s Book Challenge: A Week To Go!

I’ve got my book ready…do you?

SpReAd The Love

Are you joining us in our Children’s Book Challenge this year? We’d love to have you. We’ve had some donations already and a steady stream of people who are planning to blog and, as always, the more the merrier!

Dr. Seuss bench in London, courtesy of suzy from Silver Blue Lining

The challenge is this: if there’s a book you loved as a child or a children’s book you’ve read and loved as an adult, we invite you to write a review of it and then donate a copy to a school, a library, a children’s hospital or Ronald McDonald house, or a child in your own life. Pretty simple, right? If you’d like to write a review but don’t have a blog of your own we can arrange a host for you here at SpReAd The Love, or at AncientArmitage, The Armitage Authors Network,  Me+Richard, or FunkyBlueDandelion.  If you’d prefer to just donate a…

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Inter alia: Holy Americana!

It’s been deep winter weather lately and the natives have been restless.

In an effort to stem off an imminent outbreak of cabin fever, I agreed to take Mini Me and a few of her friends roller skating today. 

This place, aptly named “Skate City” has not changed a whole lot since 1982….well, at least the smell hasn’t. It hits you as soon as you breech the inner doors.  Showbiz Son has described it as the scent of “rubber, broken dreams and tears”  The program including the “Hokey Pokey” and the “Limbo” is strangely familiar…I wonder what happened to “shooting the duck?”  There are even echoes of the music of my early teens as “Ghostbusters” earned a rousing sing along chorus.

One thing has definitely changed…the afternoon demographic.  What used to be heavily populated by tweens dropped off by parents for an only lightly “supervised” afternoon, is now a veritable birthday party factory for 7-9 year olds.  Even more unexpected is the inexplicably large number of non skating adult party guests…which results in my being stuck on a bench next to a garbage can dodging the errant cues of ten year old pool sharks on the adjacent table. 

Good times!  Good times!

Think SPRING Armitageworld!!!

Hearts, flowers, candy and blood sacrifice? Happy Valentine’s Day Armitageworld!

It’s Lupercalia again Armitage world!

Ancient Armitage

People seem to be very interested in sleuthing out the ancient origins of modern customs, and Valentine’s Day is no different.  I had a general idea of what I’d find when I started looking more closely…and as it turns out, the origins of the romantic-y lovey dovey side of Valentine’s Day are rather murky.  The holiday itself is a Christian feast day in honor of St. Valentine (or Saints Valentine…there seem to have been several martyred by the still pagan Romans), but how it came to be a festival of love and lovers and it’s possible connection to any ancient pagan rite is much less clear.

It is not uncommon to find Christian festival days coinciding with  ancient ones…in fact, I came across entries from several rather irate atheists who are really put out that the Christian church has routinely glommed on to pagan festival days for it’s own nefarious…

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One of these things is not like the others Richard Armitage…

When I finally got around to downloading the Audible app onto my new phone this morning, it occurred to me that I may well have been the only person in Armitageworld who hadn’t heard Richard Armitage reading Classic Love Poems, just in time for Valentine’s Day.  I listened to the recording on my morning commute.  Romance, passion, lust, obsession.  The stuff love poetry is made of.

Source

Then came a splash of cold water. I Corinthians 13: 4-8.  I have heard this verse trotted out at dozens of Christian weddings over the years and it never fails to leave me a bit chilly.  I find it kind of odd here in that it really is not poetry in any way – nor is it particularly romantic…or passionate.  I suppose the issue I’m struggling with is the context.  I Corinthians is St. Paul’s (Saul of Tarsus as was) first letter to the nascent Christian church at Corinth, Greece, and it is decidedly didactic in tone.  In the previous twelve books, Paul provides detailed instruction as to how the church at Corinth, a tiny Christian island in a sea of polytheistic pagans, should go about their Christian business.  For instance…in a preceding chapter that made me bristle during Sunday service a few weeks ago, Paul instructs on what to do about “idol meat”

And so on and so on.  It’s all pretty unromantic if you ask me.

Now, for romantic biblical LOVE poetry, one needs to look no further than the Song of Solomon.  Flocks of goat and sheep similes aside, the Song of Songs (as the book is also known) is full of all the passion and romance that is typical of the most swoonworthy love poetry…just take a look at the opening verse:

Biblical love poetry is some pretty potent stuff, but I also have a favorite non biblical ancient verse that seems to suit my current mood…

Odi et amo. Quare id faciam, fortasse requiris.
nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior.

…Catullus – Carmen 85

Ah, the ebb and flow of love.  For better or worse, it definitely keeps me on my toes!  🙂

SpReAd The Love children’s Book Challenge: Aaaand We’re Off!

I haven’t even picked my book yet, and we’re already off and running!

SpReAd The Love

We posted about the 2nd Children’s Book Challenge on Sunday and a couple of you fabulous people have already donated! Thanks so much for kicking us off to a great start!

If you’re just cruising in for the first time, let me fill you in on what we’re doing. If there’s a book you loved as a child or a children’s book you’ve read and loved as an adult, we invite you to write a review of it and then donate a copy to a school, a library, a children’s hospital or Ronald McDonald house, or a child in your own life. Pretty simple, right? If you’d like to write a review but don’t have a blog of your own we can arrange a host for you or if you’d prefer to just donate a book without a review just be sure to let us know so that we can count it toward…

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SpReAd The Love Children’s Book Challenge: Dr. Seuss Is On The Loose Again

We’re kicking off with the Children’s Book Challenge…check it out!

SpReAd The Love

When Obscura and I were talking about what we’d like to do with SpReAd the Love this year the one challenge that we really wanted to keep was this one. Last year our participants donated twenty-seven books to libraries, schools, children’s hospitals, and to special children in their lives and hosted twenty-one posts on blogs all throughout Armitageworld. Can we outdo ourselves this year?

The challenge is this: if there’s a book you loved as a child or a children’s book you’ve read and loved as an adult, we invite you to write a review of it and then donate a copy to a school, a library, a children’s hospital or Ronald McDonald house, or a child in your own life. Pretty simple, right? If you’d like to write a review but don’t have a blog of your own we can arrange a host for you or if you’d prefer…

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Death, taxes and Richard Armitage et alia Obscura inevitables

It’s February 7th and I have had a trying week filled with “Obscura inevitables”

1.  When needing to travel for work, my cell phone will refuse to charge – leaving me vulnerable to a lack of roadside assistance.  Since I’m blogging from the comfort of home this turned out to be moot, but even so…who runs around without a functioning mobile phone in the wilds of the Upper Midwest I ask you??

2. Traveling out of town for work will always be in the depth of winter and naturally coincide with a dumping of 11.5 inches of snow on a destination which has “run out of plowing and road salt budgetary funds resulting in the unplowed state of side streets.”  

3.  When needing to be at a departmental meeting the morning after traveling out of town for said department, my cell phone will refuse to charge – leaving me without access to my calendar for the next day. (see “1” above.)

4.  At the most inconvenient point possible, after traveling out of town for work in a rental vehicle, my personal vehicle will decide to flip me off AFTER the return of the rental vehicle, necessitating procurement of a ride back to rent another vehicle whilst my own is being repaired by a mechanic who looks at me like it’s weird that my car appears to be housing a family of four.

Etcetera, etcetera. etcetera…so goes my week.  In and amidst all of this bounty, I received word that a lovely woman from church, on the way to visit a sister dying of cancer, had been involved in a terrible auto accident which killed her passenger, another of her sisters.  Death is an immutable fact of life, but I cannot imagine the devastating contemplation of the loss of two sisters at all, not to mention while she herself is struggling to recover from her own serious injuries.  Any positive mojo into the universe on her behalf is appreciated.

On to taxes:

“Every organized society throughout history has had taxes…whether they were paid in peanuts or diamonds, taxes are taxes.”  Prof. Obscura uttered this sentence in all of her intro classes this week as, we begin talking about the criteria of state level societies.  For those of you unfamiliar with US tax code, it’s income tax time.  Generally speaking, people filing tax returns well in advance of the April 15th deadline are expecting a refund from the Internal Revenue Service.

I did it, I did it, I did it!! Hurray!!!
….Dora the Explorer

You guessed it…after grappling with the State of Wisconsin Department of Revenue site (FYI:  WIDOR e-file is not a fan of Google Chrome) I am now in anticipation of my annual tax refund.  We won’t be running away for a luxury vacation, but yipee…Look out Blue Harbor, here we come to take a dip in the human stew of the indoor waterpark!!   Better yet, I can check this one of my “To Do” list.

Last but not least, there’s Richard Armitage.  So much going on right now.  So much that resonates on a personal level with me that I seem to make connections all over the place.  For instance, this appeared on my RL FB wall this week:

Words to live by from an icon of my youth…

That picture of Fred Rogers, beloved by PBS watching “children” of a certain vintage immediately called to mind this favorite of mine…

Mr. Rogers a la Richard Armitage
Photo by George Pimentel

…which always makes me smile.  You see, Armitageworld has become a place of refuge for me…a place where I can express myself and enjoy the company of a great group of people.  Despite the frequent drama….I don’t often comment on it publicly, but I definitely am aware of it and the fact that it so very often seems to emanate from a few predictable sources…I cherish this place…warts and all I guess!