Last night I dreamed we were all in Columbus and we were all sitting around the family room which was furnished only with sofas against two walls. The walls were light colored, nearly white, and were not adorned with art. There were no lamps and no coffee table. My point of view was from the hallway leading to the bathroom, looking across the family room towards the kitchen table which was not that table. This one was almost colorless. Not steel, not glass, but gray with straight lines like a pencil drawing. It was washed out by a strong light that poured out from the kitchen which was to the left, but out of view. You couldn't see it but you knew it was there. No one was sitting around the table.

Everyone was sitting around in those sofas against the walls, happy, together, visiting. I was standing in the hallway when Russ and Marge emerged from the kitchen. Russ walked across the room towards me and I wanted to jump into his arms like a little kid but then I remembered he was old and I was too big for that. I jumped onto a nearby armchair instead and, somehow, I was just tall enough to hug him. He wore a white dress shirt that had little grey or silver threads running through the thin fabric and his hair was white and slicked back. He was unshaven and I could feel his white bristles against my face as we held each other tightly. We both cried, we missed each other so much.

Marge stood nearby, looking on. Her hair was done and she looked content. She wore a dark red, long-sleeved, collarless silk top. The placket and neck were accented with a deep blue. She was the only color in the room.

Here's the pun, what's the setup?

Use this in a sentence: unconfectional love.

Okay, how about a definition?

      Unconfectional love = a plastic wedding cake

I dreamed I met John Lennon's father. His name was Bright Johnson.

Go figure.

Like an inside joke . . .

" Oh, the repair regs. Newly effective for 2014, these dramatic alterations to the way we evaluate repair costs will represent the single biggest pain in the ass of the entire 2015 tax season. And courtesy of the reporting requirements necessary to adopt the regulations, the remaining portion of the planet’s rainforest will soon be mowed down to accommodate all of the Forms 3115, Change in Accounting Method, that will need to be filed over the next few months. It is not overstating the situation to say that the average tax preparer will complete more Forms 3115 this year than in all of his or her previous years combined; if you believe some of the doomsayers, every taxpayer with a depreciation schedule will need at least five Forms 3115 attached to their return. "

Four Things Sure To Destroy Your Tax Season | Forbes

. . . it kind of makes me want to laugh and cry at the same time.

In Case The Heretics Are Wondering

Bandwagon fan? How to talk Seahawks when you don't actually know what you're talking about 

So what do you do if you have a passing interest or just started following the team in recent weeks and don't want to sound like a complete idiot? 

MyNorthwest.com

(or recent hours as the case may be)

Just don't wash your lucky jersey. Or socks. Or anything.

Not for two weeks.

(I don't care what you smell like.)

Controversy in Portland

At the Super Bowl of Linguistics, May the Best Word Win | The New York Times

“What happens after this?” I whispered to a man next to me. 

“After we choose the Word of the Year?” he asked. “Pillaging. I expect downtown Portland to be wrecked.” He paused. “That’s rekt,” a shorthand spelling of the word. “R-E-K-T.” 

It was a bit of linguistic humor for the start of what is perhaps the year’s most anticipated lexicological event: the annual selection of the Word of the Year (also known as WOTY) by the American Dialect Society. If wordsmiths had a Super Bowl, this would be it, a place where the nation’s most well-regarded grammarians, etymologists and language enthusiasts gather to talk shop.

It's not all about football, you know.

(Read the article, btw. It's worth the time.)

Something To Look Forward To

Nightmare 2015 tax filing season predicted

The 2015 tax filing season is gearing up to be a nightmare -- the worst in more than a decade -- thanks to fewer and more poorly trained Internal Revenue Service employees. 

CBS News

Can't wait.

Iconic Carpet?

Pop quiz: What's the carpet look like at the airport closest to you? Or, any airport for that matter.

Forget airports, can you think of any carpet pattern in any public space anywhere? I can visualize the carpet pattern on the bulkhead of an Alaska Airlines flight quite clearly because I've stared at it for countless hours over the years. But that's on a wall, not the floor.

If you ever saw it, you could never forget the circles that were spray-painted onto the carpet in my childhood home. Sure, it was the 60's but the pattern was really just an elaborate scheme to cover up a spot in the rug.

But I couldn't tell you the pattern in the rug at the library, for instance. Or the color of the linoleum tile at the grocery store. Could you?

Jasper Fforde likes taking pictures of carpets. (You can see his photos by following him on Instagram or Twitter.) He even took one of the carpet at Portland International Airport. According to Oregon Live, the nearly-30-year-old carpet is iconic.

Iconic. (Spray-painted circles is iconic. Any carpet in Las Vegas is iconic. Maybe they meant ironic.)

If I don't update the carpet in my house for another 20 years with that be iconic too? (I should let Zillow know that's an architectural feature.)

Portland's airport carpet has it's own social media accounts and now you can buy clothing that sport the carpet's pattern. (It's like Gone With The Wind only with carpet.)

PDX's most famous feature is being replaced but don't despair! As the airport spends the next year replacing the 13 acres of carpet, you have the opportunity to buy some of the old carpet. It's only slightly used - by some 300,000,000 people. (Should I let Jasper know?)

Hey, we just bought a new condo. Maybe I can put some of the PDX carpet in the living room. What do you think?

My Mac is in one city and the power cord is in another. Time to get another power cord. 

Go Nuts

Well, I knew who was going to win but I wasn't about to say so. Not here, in Duck Country. A number of workers called in sick yesterday with Duck Fever and wherever you went you could find cars lining the street outside houses hosting viewing parties, the volume of which spilled into the neighborhood.

 

Props to the guy who came to the party with his top down even though he had evidently been skiing. That's awesome, dude. 

In other news, we made an offer on a condo yesterday which was immediately accepted. For those of you with programs, it's not the one we originally made an offer on. The seller of that condo let the offer expire thinking they would get other offers over the weekend. They didn't but what did happen was another condo in the same complex came on the market. A better unit, in our opinion, at a lower price and we snatched it up.  Scheduled closing is Feb 10 but could be earlier if all goes well. 

This, btw, is in Duck Country. We are not selling our other home. 

So, go a little nuts. Everybody wins. 

I just bought a toothbrush that was so complicated that I had to read the manual to use it.

My teeth feel really clean, though.

Bowl Games

Oregon v. Florida State

Clearly, I was more interested in the uniforms than the game itself. That's generally how I bet, too - based on their colors. If I were to bet yesterday, I would have bet on red but that would have been problematic for the second game.

Speaking of which, after the Ohio State victory, I received this text: "Do Ducks eat nuts?"

The answer to which can only be: "Only if they're quacked."

HNY2015

Dave Barry's Year in Review 2014 | Miami Herald

' In Washington scandal news, the Internal Revenue Service, responding to a subpoena, tells congressional investigators that it cannot produce 28 months of Lois Lerner’s emails because the hard drive they were stored on failed, and the hard drive was thrown away, and the backup tapes were erased, and no printed copies were saved — contrary to the IRS’s own record-keeping policy, which was eaten by the IRS’s dog. “It was just one crazy thing after another,” states the IRS, “and it got us to thinking: All these years we’ve been subjecting taxpayers to everything short of rectal probes if they can’t produce EVERY SINGLE DOCUMENT WE WANT, and here we lose YEARS worth of official records! So from now on, if taxpayers tell us they lost something, or just plain forgot to make a tax payment, we’ll be like, ‘Hey, whatever! Stuff happens!’ Because who are we to judge?” 

But all kidding aside, you can bet that before this thing is over there will be a strongly worded report. '

That, and so much more.

Last-minute holiday shopping? You can buy Darryl Strawberry's Mets salary from the IRS | USA Today Sports

"Just imagine the joy in your loved one’s eyes when he or she tears the wrapping off the greatest holiday gift of all: The $1.28 million left on Darryl Strawberry’s contract with the Mets, to be paid out in 223 monthly installments of nearly six grand apiece over the next couple of decades (hint, hint)."

I once had my picture taken with this guy. I wonder if I could auction that off.

Something to Look Forward To

IRS officials warn: We're nearly crippled | The Hill

"After absorbing a $346 million budget cut, IRS officials are warning taxpayers not to expect their phone calls to get answered or their refunds to be delivered quickly. Employees shouldn’t count on overtime pay, or for empty staff slots to be filled. And lawmakers seeking to reduce the deficit should assume the agency will collect far less revenue than it could have."

Tax Season 2015 should be a barrel of monkeys. Oh, wait . . . .

Groan

Post by Car Talk.

H/T to Teja from FB

Holiday Cheers

It's still early but not as much as it was earlier.
-Starbucks barista 12/19/2014

As usual, the gifts tend to dwarf our Lite-Brite tree. But the more brown stuff that ends up there, the more into the spirit I get, so to speak. 

Darn

I was just getting ready to head out the door when I spotted a pair of socks trying to make their escape and it's not even laundry day! Seeing as I'm going to be gone for the entire weekend I would be worried except the Christmas socks aren't there so I'm pretty sure the party won't get too out of hand.

That, and there's no eggnog in the house.

Anything?

Happy National Chocolate Covered Anything Day!

Sorry, Marshawn

I was at Logan Airport one Sunday not too long ago. The Seahawks were playing that afternoon and even though I wouldn't be able to watch the game, I was wearing my Seahawks jersey. It had a 24 on the front and the name of Lynch on the back.

As I was walking down the corridor, an excited young woman approached me and asked if I was a fan of Marshawn. Without thinking, I replied, "Not really."

She went on to explain that she was Marshawn's cousin.

Oh.

"It's not that I'm not a fan," I hurried to explain. "It's just that they don't make jerseys for the Special Teams guys and this was the only jersey I could get my hands on," I said, making things worse. "I mean, who's ever heard of a jersey for the Long Snapper?"

I checked my watch and hoped the public address system would announce that I was urgently needed to board my flight. Even though she shook my hand as we wished each other a safe journey, I feel I owe her cousin an apology.

Sorry, Marshawn. I've just ordered a #49 jersey so that will never happen again.