When I grow up...

I love the movie Ghostbusters. And, I think it was because of that movie that I've always wanted to live in a converted firehouse. While other girls were fantasizing about castles, Prince Charming and unicorns, I wanted to live in a firehouse when I grew up. An old school one with a pole through the floors. By the time other girls my age were hanging dream catchers over their beds, I was thinking about how cool it would be if I could convince all my close friends to live in this firehouse with me. We could convert each floor into an apartment or two, have a couple of dogs and cats, and use the ground floor (with its big red fire engine garage doors) as a workshop and garage. That way, I'd have the best of both worlds -- my friends when I wanted to see them, and my own place when I didn't. Naturally, I never actually lived in a firehouse. Neither did my friends.

Now that I'm older, I no longer fantasize about a firehouse full of friends. Lately, I've had a new thought as I've read about a slew of Napa and Sonoma vineyards under financial duress, and I've been fantasizing about a new future. Instead of a firehouse, it'd be awesome if my friends and I could pool together about $2M for couple of acres of vineyard (complete with farmhouse and barn) an hour or two outside San Francisco. It'd be enough acreage to make about 300 cases a year, which definitely wouldn't be enough to make a profit (unless we're talking about Screaming Eagle), but it might be enough for us to be hobby vintners and have a place to go get away, be outside, work the land and hang out. It'll never happen, but with Ghostbusters far behind me, it's nice to have such thoughts.

Plants that want to eat people

People sized viney or big-leafed plants scare me. I'm convinced that they secretly want to eat people.

I've always been nervous around big leafy plants. I've thought about it, and it's probably the result of A Little Shop of Horrors, The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and an overactive imagination as a child. The first was because absent parents translated into no television censorship whatsoever, which really wasn't a big deal because we didn't have cable. The second was because in every episode of TMNT, radioactive waste would inevitably drip into the sewer system causing hostile killer vines to sprout through the sidewalk and wrap around a turtle. The vine would wave the turtle madly in the air, trying to strangle the life out of him, while his brothers desperately tried to hack him free. And, the last was because I was a social reject and had no friends.

Needless to say, I was especially careful to watch for sly plants trying to snatch me up while I was on the Petroglyph Trail. Fortunately, I made it out safe and sound so I can go back to stick it to the plants yet another day.

From Plants that might eat me