Hooking Up Officer James

I met Officer H. James a couple of years ago.

He works as armed security at the Coast Guard Island Military Base in Alameda.

I'll be honest, I have made goo goo eyes at him, and he has at me as well. I don't know his first name, so I just call him Officer James.

He is 40ish, studly and what my husband Alex calls a PMF. (That's Alex's acronym for PrettyLooking Mother ******.) I agree wholeheartedly. He is indeed a PMF.

Okay, I have a cleaning lady who has a daughter we'll call Marina. We'll call her that because it is her name. Marina is 20 years old and comes to help her Mom every other week at our house. Marina is gorgeous and looks like a 20 year old Jennifer Lopez.

Marina's parents are from El Salvador. They are lovely people. We have known Marina since she was 8 years old. We have attended her First Holy Communion, her party when she turned 15, her Confirmation, and her high school graduation. In other words, these people are family, not employees. (In fact, Alex has given Marina cell phones, computers, printers, laptops, an ipod, etc.) We love her.

Marina is going to Junior College at the present time. She needed a job so we got her an application from Coast Guard Island so she could apply to the Base Exchange there. Marina applied and was hired in record time.

I asked Marina if she had noticed Officer H. James. She said she had and that he was "mean". I was flabbergasted! Mean? He's hot, Missy! That man sizzles! He's a PMF!

Marina responded that he had teased her and she didn't like him.

Next time I talked to Officer H. James, I told him my friend said he was "mean". He was visibly upset over that charge. "I was teasing her" he said. Uh huh.

I told Marina she should ask him out. She said "Eww! He's old!" Say what? This prime specimen is in his prime, Honey! In fact, he would be a great match for Marina. He is cute, nice (from what I can see) and has a Jay Oh Bee. Excuse me Sister. You will not be able to keep it forever! (I give good advice as you can see.)

I mentioned to Officer H. James that I had told Marina to ask him out. He flashed those white teeth at me, smiled and said "What did she say?" I responded, "She said that wouldn't be right."

Oh baby, (Officer H. James), I'd never hurt your feelings. Even if you are kind of a dirty old man for thinking about going out with a 20 year old girl.

Hat Hair In London

The last time I was in London, I got dreadful sick.

I realize you think I should have said "dreadfully", but I think that sounds affected.

London in February is colder than the North Pole I'm sure. It's painfully cold. It was all I could do to not wear a ski mask whenever I went outside.

My husband had a goofy looking black watch cap that I wore all the time, along with my long johns, black wool sweater, black wool trousers, black boots and long black wool coat and of course, gloves. Frankly, I guess I looked like a terrorist but I didn't care.

The problem in really cold climates is that everybody heats the indoor spaces so you nearly die from heat prostration when you walk inside. Walking in freezing cold weather and then walking into an overheated space makes one perspire freely. I am not comfortable with being sweaty. In fact I find it downright distasteful.

This also creates a hat hair problem. I think most of us know what hat hair looks like. Since I wear my hair quite short, shoving a wool watch cap on it is not a problem. The problem is that if I take the hat off, it will look like I'm wearing a fright wig. If I do not take it off, perspiration will drip down my face in to my eyes and continue on down to drip off my chin. That is not an elegant look at all.

I've never had this happen in Paris. Even if it's cold, I look great there. In London? Not so much.

To top all this off, I got food poisoning my last evening in London. My husband had to get a doctor to come to the hotel to treat me. I truly thought I was dying. The doctor told me I was dangerously dehydrated and gave me about 3 shots, some pills, and a warning not to fly for at least 48 hours. Drugged up a bit, I slept for an hour, felt better and said "Let's go home!"

I pulled on my black uniform along with my black hat and we raced to the airport to catch our flight. I sat in a seat at the airport with perspiration seeping down from under my hat and dripping off my chin while Alex checked us in. An Englishman tried to chat me up. I guess he thought it might be romantic to boink a sick prostitute one last time before she died. Or maybe I just looked like I had one good romp left in me.

What's New Pussycat?

Sophie was a cat who had it going on.

She was the kind of cat you would give long stemmed red roses to.

Sophie knew how to enjoy life. She was elegant and refined. She was also very particular about things in general.

Sophie demanded that her litter box be cleaned after each and every use. If it was in the middle of the night? Too bad. Sophie would also approach her water bowl and vocalize that she wanted fresh water, not the water than had been sitting there for an hour.

Sophie posed for the artist so she could take a photo. The painter took about 200 photos of her before getting just the right one for her oil painting. This took 5 days because Sophie refused to pose for more than a half hour a day.

It took about an hour a day to groom Sophie. She made you follow her around to groom her. It amused Sophie to see people crawling around on the floor after her. She was a fun girl with a great sense of humor. Sophie liked to sit up in her cat tree and put her paw and claws into anyone's hair that passed by. If that person squealed, it made her day.

Sophie was very beautiful and she knew it. She was also arrogant and felt superior to other cats. For that matter, she thought that dogs were a lower life form. (Come to think of it, Sophie felt the same way about humans.)

I loved Sophie even though she made me feel inadequate, awkward, and ridiculous most of the time. A beautiful female can do that to me and to many other people.

She's gone now, but I still think about her.

Geeks and Freaks

Why are geeky people so into horror films, zombie movies, science fiction movies, vampire movies, alien, cannibal, and teen slasher movies?

My husband Alex is about the most "plugged in" person I have ever known. He had cell phones and pagers when I met him, and that was before most people had all that "stuff".

Alex babbles on a lot about things like band width. I stick my fingers in my ears so I don't have to listen to him. I have no idea what he talks about most of the time.

When the iPhone came out, he had to have it. When the iPhone4 came out he has to have it, too. Of course, he's got an iPod.

He's also had blackberries, laptops, including a mini-laptop that weighed about 3 pounds, as well as two computer stations in the house and a complete network of about 5 computers down in the man cave.

He gives his old things away as soon as the new thing comes out. We had a geek friend over yesterday to watch the Giants baseball game. Alex was showing our friend his iPad and all of its features. Uh huh. Then he told our friend, "Dude, as soon as the new one comes out, I'll give this one to you."

The iPad was my gift to him for our anniversary last Wednesday. He's already planning to give it away? And what is it about the iPad that is so great anyway? It looks just like the iPhone but bigger.

I have watched "Aliens", "Aliens vs Predator", "The Fifth Element", "Terminator 1 2 and 3", "Invasion of the Body Snatchers", "Blade Runner", a bunch of Ron Zombie movies, "The Hills Have Eyes", "Wrong Turn", "Dawn of the Dead". Horror and ooze just delights Alex. Me, not so much.

It's not that these movies scare me. I just think they are dumb. But then I also think it's dumb of me to go buy something and spend a lot of money on it when I don't even know or want to know what it is in the first place, since it's just going to be given away anyway.

Inside The Emerald Triangle

We left for Mendocino on Wednesday morning.

Although I am a native San Franciscan, I've never been to Mendocino before. Nor had Alex. For that matter, neither had Harry or Honey.

Mendocino is in "The Emerald Triangle", the counties of Mendocino, Humboldt, and Trinity, and is the major production area of marijuana in California and for that matter the US. The region is also called "Behind The Redwood Curtain".

We were going up for a major growers conference. Kidding! We were going up to check it out and spend our 21st anniversary there. I have always heard it's a beautiful area.

After splitting off from Highway 101, we found ourselves traveling on a two lane road through an amazingly dense national redwood forest. I find trees intimidating and frightening in the best of times. I was thinking ocean views and cool temps. I was wrong. The outside temperature reached 106 degrees.

Harry was panting and whimpering despite the air conditioning in the car and so was I. I don't like curvy roads, or trees, or heat for that matter. Harry insisted that we pull over the car every 20 miles or so. He was crying like his bowels were going to explode. I was crying like my head was going to explode.

For those of you who are non-believers, aliens live in the forests. That's why there are all those twisted looking trees. They are there and look up the information from former Air Force officers if you don't believe me!

After about 4 hours, we got to Mendocino. It's kind of rich hippie pretty. Our cabin was cool, the white dudes around town had dreadlocks and had spacey eyes. The wine was good as was the weed. (Just kidding again.) It was way way too hard a trip for the payoff.