Kitchen Research and the DeLorean

WEDNESDAY, MAY 19, 2010


Kitchen Research and the DeLorean

I am not waiting until after midnite because I will be exhausted by then. I have a few questions and more questions. Few answers. So I started to follow my own blog just to see if I could and no one else seemed to want to. I can't start high fiving somebody in the next cubicle yet.

Is it plagiarism to quote Wikipedia? Most universities think so. So to avoid being sued I am going to credit this entire post to the interweb and people who have lived before me or are still alive since I am sure almost every thought that is printed here is not unique. Since all the words are in the dictionary I am hoping that they don’t own the copyright on them.

I read somewhere that if you wrote yourself a letter with your idea in it and sent it to yourself via the US Postal Service in a certified letter that if you ever needed to prove that you thought it up first then the unopened certified letter is proof that you did and that would help with the intricacies of the Copyright and the legal morass that it is.

I am in the middle of a small dilemma regarding that since I found just such a letter that I wrote to myself back in the seventies. Unlike some of the newfangled computer questionnaires I am pretty certain that this letter is from the 1900’s and not some time we have not experienced yet. By the way you got any spare banana peels and other trash I can stuff into the intake of my DeLorean?

Seriously though, how can we be sure that we did not already think of something and maybe somebody jumped into their stainless steel vehicle and got enough gigawatts or joules/hour to go romping around the galaxy faster than warp or the speed of light to rip us off? My solution to this problem figures as the literary agent. I am not quite sure yet how, but I am sure a literary agent and a few good attorneys can help me solve the problem.

For right now though: do I open the envelope or not to see what in the heck such a brainiac idea was that I thought I might need copyright protection for it? Or is there somewhere that I can less expensively obtain everything needed to properly equip a used DeLorean for time travel?

My guess is that I should open the envelope in the presence of a lawyer with affidavits printed prior, attesting to its authenticity and two Notaries present as a fall back option. Thinking about it, maybe it should be someone a little more trustworthy than an attorney at law. Possibly I could convince the Supremes to help out in this. Not the singers, the other Supremes.

Going back to before I wrote whatever is in the envelope that I can not recall, I come across the other problem and that was the advice not to trust anyone over thirty. Well since I passed that milestone long ago I can confirm that since I passed thirty there is little I can trust about my own decision making process or more especially and specifically, my memory.

Sometimes I think people are messing with me… especially about the memory thing. I started to wonder just who was leaving all the cabinets open in the kitchen. Since I could not remember opening them; I was certain it was me. Then in a scientific experiment with controls bordering on the insane or what’s involved in developing a new cancer cure, I started doing a little checking.

I would sneak into the kitchen and determine if any cabinet doors were open. If there were any that were not completely closed I would not even begin to think about who was responsible and instead would just close them. Religiously, I would enter the data into my handy notebook and enter the day, date and time. Usually I lost the notebook somewhere in one of the piles of notebooks I have all over the place. Frequently this was not a surefire method. It did however work well enough for me to come to several astounding conclusions. First and foremost, it is apparent that I had far too many notebooks. As a secondary conclusion, I did determine that at least on some occasions I was not the responsible party.

In this household since I was not responsible for all the unclosed kitchen cabinet doors, that left a total of five of the usual suspects if you count the pets. I confirmed on one of my cabinet door checking data collection trips to the kitchen that another human was a contributing guilty party. She was making some peanut butter and chocolate chip cookies and there were three open cabinet doors in her presence. I was certain that she had left the doors open so I asked one of those really revealing and ignorant questions: “Did you leave these cabinet doors open?” She did not try to point the finger at the little Cute Little Orange Talking Kitty, the ‘Purrfect Kitty”, “Escapacus Big Gray” or even DakotaDawg. She owned up but said, “What about it? I am going to close them when I put this stuff away.”

Sure. I knew right then and there that she might be having a little bit of fun. However, open kitchen cabinets can be deadly. I know this because I frequently crack my head on one of them. So I closed all the doors to continue with my data collection and went to sit in my recliner. I forgot to note all of this in the appropriate and current notebook and computer spreadsheets and databases.

Days passed and I forgot the quest. Then I heard the Cute Little Orange Talking Kitty talking from somewhere I could not figure out. He was not doing a screeching aria so there was no emergency to get him off a rug or valuable piece of furniture. I took my time and with the acute auditory awareness that comes after failing to wear ear protection at rock concerts or when operating lawn blowers and power tools; I found the source of this pleading. The Cute Little Orange Talking Kitty was in the corner cabinet with the Lazy Susan. It was closed but he was darn sure in there. I spun it open and he looked like a kid on a carousel as he rode the collection of Tupperware and Cool Whip containers to the front. I told him to get outta the closet and being the obedient cat that he is he followed my instructions precisely.

Now I started to try to figure out how long he had been in the closet. I almost gave up on that since nobody had been at home except the pets and I did not suspect DakotaDawg of this mischief. I could not have closed him in there because I could not even remember going into that cabinet that day or the one before. Not that I didn’t, just that I could not remember if I had or hadn’t. Then I started to question if he might have been in the closet for days or even whether he could have possibly been one of ‘those’ kinds of cats. Maybe he had been in the closet since he took up residence here or even prior to that.

That mystery was solved the next day when I found him in the kitchen batting at the Lazy Susan’s door just behind his food dish. ‘Big Grey’ often goes over there and bats the door around a little after a visit to the litter box. I think he enjoys getting the clumping litter from between his toes by scratching on that door or pushing the food dish around. He certainly does not expend that kind of energy covering up the ‘massives’. The ‘massives’ often make me wonder if DakotaDawg is making some kind of donation in the litter box instead of hunting for a snack.

Part of the problem was solved. Either the Cute Little Orange Talking Kitty was opening the door for his own convenience or ‘Big Grey’ was shoving him in there in a vain attempt to maintain his own status in the pride. The Cute Little Orange Talking Kitty has been getting a little bossy lately and trying to take over.

I began to wonder if possibly DakotaDawg had also solved the mystery of the closed toilet lid in her love of another of the things you really don’t want her to be involved with if she is giving you a kiss. I know once she had stolen the father in law’s doggie bag of grilled grouper off the counter.

I remembered that DakotaDawg got a dressing down verging on verbal animal abuse when an aluminum foil wrapper that had been coated with spray canola and olive oil and secret marinade ingredients mysteriously was wiped all over the newly mopped kitchen floor. I really let her have it. She looked up at me in the way that only she can, showing a lot of whites around her eyes. She looks just like that when the thunder booms or lightening strikes right outside the window.

Upon further investigation of that incident (and a much more thorough evaluation) I found out that I was mistaken. Cute Little Orange Talking Kitty paw prints were up on the counter and all around on the just cleaned floor. The verbal abuse incident occurred before we found Cute Little Orange Talking Kitty in the cabinet, so possibly DakotaDawg figured a way to show that little guy that payback was hell.

A high school friend had a big brown chocolate lab much like DakotaDawg. He and his family came home from church one Easter and found the big brown chocolate lab sprawled on the kitchen floor in front of the open refrigerator with what was left of the standing rib beside her. His mother finally got to the point that she kept a chain with a combination lock on it on the refrigerator. She had to use a combination lock since the kids kept losing the keys and that got very inconvenient when supper approached and all the food was safely locked in the fridge where the dog couldn’t get to it.

Not one to be distracted I continue to ponder what in the world is in that envelope. Is there any way that I can either remember (doubtful) or figure out what it is without opening it and or getting the Supremes involved? I know if I just slit the envelope open all of my past dreams of a financial windfall that would result from what the contents might reveal are lost.

The other problem relating to the darned envelope is that I found it when I was cleaning up and looking for something else that it was crucial that I find right then. Someone else came to the rescue and found what I was looking for, somehow. It was somewhere either I put it so I wouldn’t forget where it was (because there is no way I would ever put it there) or someone else put it out of sight because some relatives or guests were coming to visit and we needed to straighten up. I am going with Option A.

I am still wondering not just what the heck is in that envelope but where in the heck did I put it this time so I would not forget where it was. I’d bet that Cute Little Orange Talking Kitty stuck it in some closet somewhere or maybe DakotaDawg flushed it down the toilet after she read it while sucking down some party punch.

I think I hear the Cute Little Orange Talking Kitty climbing into the DeLorean. I better get that letter from him and rush down and open it in front of the one Notary that I can claim as a real friend before I hit my head on another cabinet door.


And, DakotaDawg, get the heck out of that refrigerator!