Mystery Fawn in the Alberta Pine - Le Château Raymond, Great Falls, Virginia
Exif: ISO 50; f/4; 1/60 sec; 110mm
03.30.2007 ©Michael Raymond 2006 - 2007

Jeff Watson AI Threat Level: Green - The reader may proceed without danger of reading anything related to American Idol.

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A new contractor began working at the Place of Toil and Labor yesterday - turns out she went to UC Davis at the same time I did. We spent some time chatting about the campus and the exotic sites around the town of Davis.

“I used to spend a lot of time at a place called Crepe Bistro,” she said.

“Never heard of it,” I replied.

“They made the best crepes…”

“Wait a minute…did they also serve fondue in copper pots?”

“Yeah,” she said, circling the air with her fingers, drawing a pot in the air. “And they served the crepes in them too.”

“I remember that place. I used to work there as a dishwasher. The cheese from the fondue would melt onto the sides of the pots. It was impossible to get off. And the owner was a bastard.”

“I thought you had never heard of the place.”

“I’ve spent sixteen years purging the memory. Thanks for bringing it back.”

She also told me that Murder Burgers is no longer called Murder Burgers. Some residents got upset about the name, decided it was inflammatory or caused itching in tender places or some such nonsense (it’s a burger joint, for God’s sake!) and made the place change its name. It’s now called Redrum Burgers.

So now, instead of Murder Burgers they have Jack Nicholson bashing through a door with an axe so he can hack Shelley Duvall into tiny pieces. Yes, that’s a better image for the children.

Mystery Fawn beneath the Cherry Tree - Le Château Raymond, Great Falls, Virginia
Exif: ISO 50; f/4; 1/250 sec; 110mm
03.29.2007 ©Michael Raymond 2006 - 2007

Jeff Watson AI Threat Level: Green - The reader may proceed without danger of reading anything related to American Idol.

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Just eight days ago I posted an old joke about the dirtiest line ever uttered on television:

Q: What’s the dirtiest line ever uttered on television?

A: “Ward, I think you were a little hard on the Beaver last night.”

Well I’m here to tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that we have a new champion for the dirtiest line ever uttered on television (not counting cable, of course, or pay-per-view or adult programming or Fox News). Our winner comes to us courtesy of Quizno’s and their recent commercial for their new prime rib sandwich.

To set the stage, the commercial shows several actors typical sub-sandwich consumers comparing hefty, beefy Quizno’s prime rib sandwiches to flat, dessicated Subway sandwiches. It’s Armageddon all over the place for Subway; they’re just getting killed in the comparisons.

The final salvo of the commercial is fired by one of two attractive young women. One woman eats a Quizno’s prime rib sammich while the second woman holds one in her hands. The woman holding the sandwich exclaims to the off-camera host, wide-eyed and flirtatiously, before giggling to wrap the shot:

“It’s not lackin’ any meat…and that’s what real women need!”

Folks, we have a new winner. Mothers, hide your children.

Viewing Platform - Salto Bossetti, Iguazú Falls, Argentina
Exif: ISO 200; f/8; 1/100 sec; 24mm
12.25.2006 ©Michael Raymond 2006 - 2007

Jeff Watson AI Threat Level: Orange - There is a small amount of American Idol content present in this post. Proceed with caution.

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La Raymunda called me at the Place of Toil and Labor just after our weekly project status meeting broke up at 10:00.

“Do you have any idea why…”

(and right here I’m already thinking, “Uh oh…what did I do?”)

“…there is a chipped ceramic deer in our front yard?”

(Whew. She didn’t see the hookers and the crack pipes I hid in the closet. Home free!)

We have a guest living among our daffodils - a ceramic deer named Mystery Fawn. (You can see a photo of Mystery Fawn here.) I opened the garage door yesterday to go to work and as I walked around the back of La Raymunda’s car I spotted a deer sitting in the flower bed. I stopped, looked again and, realizing Mystery Fawn was ceramic, stood a while longer trying to figure out where, exactly, Mystery Fawn came from.

There is a house down the street that has been for sale for nine months or so. They have weird red bricks piled up around their trees and flower beds and fake deer standing in the backyard. No one will buy the house, even though the asking price has come down about $75,000. Apparently weird red bricks and fake deer in the backyard are the kiss of death in real estate.

But I digress.

So the only thing I could think of was that some teenage kid stole Mystery Fawn and deposited him amongst our daffodils. Why us in all of suburbia? Well, why not? “Totally random,” I told La Raymunda. She, with her extensive experience with vandalism, believed that vandals actually thought things through before they ran around smashing mailboxes and pumpkins and riding their bikes across other peoples’ lawns.

La Raymunda guesses our next door neighbor, Chris, dropped Mystery Fawn off for an unannounced visit. We had sushi with Chris and Cindy a couple of nights ago and we talked about the fake deer in the backyard down the street - and it wouldn’t be a stretch to imagine Chris digging out some old garden-fawn from out of his basement and plopping it down next to our driveway in the middle of the night. This is the same man who dressed as a vampire and then harnessed himself to the ceiling of his two-story foyer with bungee cords so he could swoop down on trick-or-treaters on Halloween. A ceramic deer prank is kid’s play for Chris.

I’m coming around on the Chris O’Neill’s Wild Kingdom story myself. Chris is a perfectionist and Mystery Fawn wasn’t just cast ashore on our lawn. It’s obvious that Mystery Fawn was arranged with care, so as not to trample any flowers, aligned nicely with the sidewalk in a narrowing pinch of the flower bed with soft, chipped little eyes gazing longingly toward the northwest.

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On the marathon front, I ran ten miles on Saturday - my first day in double-digits. I learned a lot about nature’s best ambush hunters and the founding of Athens and the building of the Parthenon in the process. Did you know that mantids are nature’s best ambush hunters? They combine all four critical characteristics of an ambush hunter: skill, speed, strength and stealth. Mantids stalk the insect world as nature’s Number One ambush killing machine. True story!

My current running pace is five miles per hour, which I am trying to raise to six miles per hour this week. Also, I may have to push Marathon Day back a week or two since it looks like La Raymunda and I will be going to Mesa Verde for a week in May to celebrate our five-year anniversary.

Total mileage thus far: 86 miles.
Weight lost: 8.2 pounds (I think I’ve turned the corner on the I’m-not-losing-weight-because-I’m-gaining-muscle-and-muscle-weighs-more-than-fat theory. I’ve dropped a couple of pounds the last three days and that usually doesn’t happen except after the long Saturday runs when I lose thirty-five pounds in water weight and then gain it all back when I drink a Diet Coke. So I’m keeping my fingers crossed.)

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It’s time to torpedo the debacle that is Sanjina Malakar. I won’t even comment on the horror that was his mohawk.

~Thanks to Missus Fayne for the Sanjina album cover!~

Mystery Fawn - Le Château Raymond, Great Falls, Virginia
Exif: ISO 50; f/4; 1/60 sec; 148mm
03.27.2007 ©Michael Raymond 2006 - 2007

Jeff Watson AI Threat Level: Green - The reader may proceed without danger of reading anything related to American Idol.

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Desireé and Tiffany knew things weren’t going well when they saw me stalk out of the conference room at the Place of Toil and Labor. Apparently, I looked grumpy.

“Uh oh,” said Desireé.
“Is it bad?” asked Tiffany.
Other than to mimic holding the barrel of a shotgun in my mouth and pulling the trigger, I didn’t say anything.

I went to the restroom and when I got back I stopped by Tiffany’s cube.

“Do you have one of those friends who emails you really bad porno photos? The ones that are really disgusting and wrong? The ones that make you go, ‘OH … MY … GOD’”?

“You mean the ones where you close your eyes and move the mouse around without looking at the screen, hoping to hit the red X and close the window?”

“That’s exactly what I mean. Those kinds of pictures. A minute ago you asked me if it was bad. Yeah - it’s bad. It’s bad like one of those foul porno photos is bad. It’s bad like you don’t really understand what you’re looking at right away until you kinda tilt your head to one side and squint a little and then it all suddenly becomes shockingly, gruesomely clear what you’re looking at and then you’re really, really sorry that you ever looked and you just want to stab yourself in the eyes and die.

It’s bad like that.”

The Devil’s Throat - La Garganta del Diablo, Iguazú Falls, Argentina
Exif: ISO 400; f/8; 1/800 sec; 70mm
12.25.2006 ©Michael Raymond 2006 - 2007

Ribbit! - Huntley Meadows Park, Alexandria, Virginia
Exif: ISO 50; f/4.5; 1/160 sec; 200mm
03.25.2007 ©Michael Raymond 2006 - 2007