Oh, my stars and garters!

Foilage!

This has been a good year for leaves. Texas usually doesn't get the nice flame colors; usually the leaves turn a sickly yellow in late November, then give up, turn brown, and hurl themselves off the tree about a month later. It's very depressing, but not this season.

This is not even a particularly good example of them. I wish I'd worked to get a better picture, but I felt weird standing in front of random people's houses screwing around with the camera, so I quit. I always feel like I'm going to get in trouble for something I haven't done when I'm in Plano, despite many years of managing to not get in trouble for all the things I did do there. But I don't think I'm being paranoid--did you know someone over 30 could get carded for smoking a cigarette? Not buying a cigarette, smoking one. Being a Collin County constable must be a very boring job. (It wasn't me, by the way.)

So Thanksgiving is over--I stayed here for a tasty potluck with friends and then went up to Dallas the next day for my cousin's bat mitzvah festivities and a little lazing around the homestead.

The weekend itself was fun, but the drive home took six frigging hours. An hour of that was spent in traffic from Carl's Corner to Hillsboro, so Eric and I invented a longcut* that probably added an hour to the trip but was quiet and pastoral and fun. I'd rather drive 70 for two hours than sit in traffic for one. I drive a stick, see, and clutch ankle is a very real and devastating malady.

That's it. I hope you had a fun and meaningful holiday. I start night shift tomorrow. I am a better person when I work night shift. You'll see. I feel more beatific already.

*TX 171 east, 14 south, 6 south, U.S. 79 south, TX 130 south, west on U.S. 290 east. Many cows, tasty-looking diners, and touchingly inept Christmas displays. Highly recommended if time is not a factor, but it usually is.

Eradicator!

Dan was nice enough to let me use one of his guest passes to teach me to play racquetball tonight at the fancy UT gym. I really liked it. It was funny to me how the court is so gigantic when you're chasing after the ball but all of a sudden seems so small when there's a ball bouncing around all crazy-style right toward your face. (I bet the court seemed extremely tiny to Dan the one time I accidentally beaned him in the temple. Sorry, Dan!)

I was pretty terrible, but we were able to get some actual play going a few times, with the ball changing hands five or six times before one of us screwed up. That was so damn fun.

I was the kid who always cringed from balls and fell off skateboards and couldn't do a cartwheel and was just pretty physically lame all around, so one of the nicest surprises about my adulthood has been discovering how much I like moving around. I never knew until my very late teens or early 20s that I really like doing things like riding bikes and swimming laps and whacking balls around with a friend. There's no pressure and no expectations as an adult, at least if you're noncompetitive, so even if I'm flailing around missing balls by a yard and accidentally sending high-speed racquetballs into my friend's head, it's a pleasure to just be doing something with my clumsy body.

Like a jet stream of disappointment bearing down through my heart

Nooo! The pigbastards are laying off Dave Schwartz!

It's true that between my general avoidance of the television and his fill-in status after a bout with cancer, I haven't seen Dave on The Weather Channel in a long time. But this still sucks. He's great, and people love him so, so much. I know they do because I wrote a post about him four years ago that still generates several hits each day and has accumulated nearly 50 comments from drive-by Dave Schwartz fans over the years. The Dave Schwartz post has attracted far more attention than any other post I've ever written, way more than even the ones about chicken-fried bacon and cosmetic vaginal surgery.

In conclusion, Dave Schwartz is more popular than bacon or vaginas, and he still got canned. I don't even know what to think about the world anymore.

Wah

Eric and I were riding our bikes around the neighborhood this afternoon and discovered there is an old air-raid siren looming over a house not too far from ours.

A dip into the Statesman archive (did you know you can access full-text articles back to 1989 and a bunch of other stuff through the Austin Public Library website if you have a library card? I didn't.) revealed that the siren was installed as part of a citywide civil defense system in the early 1960s and somehow got overlooked when the system was dismantled in the 80s.

The guy who owned the house told the paper that a city inspector came out to sign off on some new construction and was like WTF, I thought we got rid of all of these. But the guy liked having it on his property, so they left it up. Shortly after that article came out, someone else got in touch with the paper to say there was one more left in South Austin, near Zilker Park. That was in 2002, so I don't know if that one is still around or not.

It was a pretty interesting bike ride. Within the space of 15 minutes we saw an air-raid siren, a fire-damaged apartment complex, and a bunch of chickens wandering around the parking lot of a burger stand.

I found the ride itself more interesting than our reason taking it, which was to hit the one stop on the East Austin Studio Tour I really wanted to check out. Nothing against the studio, which was friendly and inviting and will probably be the venue for the screen printing class I've been meaning to take for years. It just, you know, wasn't an air-raid siren.

Untangling the mysteries

Does anyone know why Walgreens stores have those annoying bright blinky strobe lights outside? This has had me annoyed/curious for a while, but as I am usually driving around in the dark when I see them, I have never done much to find out. But right now I have access to a phone line and a computer and just happen to be thinking about it, so I'm going to find out.

Seriously, why would they do that? Are they afraid planes will crash into their stupid ugly buildings? It's annoying.

Update, 11:32 a.m.: Well, that was boring. The Walgreens customer service rep said they were the security cameras. Ok, sure, but why do they blink? I performed a journalistic no-no by putting words in her mouth, asking her if it was so people would know the cameras were there and they were being watched. She said she guessed so.

She also said older stores didn't have them but the newer ones did. I said (politely) that I found them annoying. She said, "I know. When you pass by they kind of catch your attention." Silence. Ok, thank you, I said. You bet, thanks for calling Walgreens, she said. Whatever, you dumb cranky bat, she did not say, but she may have wanted to.

My day in trademarks

I still have not embraced Facebook. My sister taught me how to play Rock Band. I bought a shirt from Banana Republic.

Facebook

People keep inviting me. I still don't wanna. I already experienced the heady rush of finding everyone I know through Friendster and three-quarters of everyone I know through MySpace, and now I'm supposed to do it all over again?

I'm sure I'll buckle soon enough, but for now the idea makes me very tired. I'll be here if you need me. Or come over! I'll make coffee and let you play with my helicopter.

Bok bok bok

Eric and I brined and roasted a whole chicken tonight, which neither of us have ever done before. It was cheap* and surprisingly easy. Time-consuming, in that the soaking took four hours and the cooking 90 minutes, but easy, and actually kind of fun. It turned out pretty well, too, juicy with an attractive crispy skin. We pulled it together from a number of recipes online and I don't remember exactly how we did it, or else I'd post it. After leftovers we're going to try to make soup from the, uh, leavings. It is so gratifying to finally not suck at cooking.

The chicken-roasting project was additionally gratifying because I got to use the lemon verbena that's been growing, fragrant but essentially useless, in our backyard since August. While I was poking around online looking for lemon verbena chicken recipes, I found a bunch of other stuff to do with it, including an insane-sounding cake and mojitos. Be sure to invite me to all your afternoon teas and gatherings, because we have a ton of the stuff left and now I want to use it all before it freezes outside.

*Another sign of recession: HEB has moved the organs and random parts from a dark corner of the meat section to eye level, front and center. Aggressive merchandising of beef hearts and chicken feet=uh-oh.

Messtival

Sad story about a music festival gone wrong. Tragically, hilariously wrong.

Money quote: "In San Marcos, Mike Morgan's band, Flounders Without Eyes,* played at 6 p.m. Friday to a crowd of exactly zero."

It's that sad.

*Local jam/Grateful Dead cover band I had no idea was still around.

Oopsies.

As the name might imply, Stone Ruination IPA is not the best beer for a weeknight. And maybe I've got a palate hopelessly dumbed down by extremes--I like my coffee too strong, my food too salty, and my beer too flavorful--but their claims of being a "hop monster" and "a liquid poem to the glory of hop!" are spurious bullshit. It's tasty, though, and strong. Strong like a stongly strong strongman.

I feel dizzy.

Happy birthday to this.

Wowee. Stars and Garters has been around in one form or another for five years now. I'm kind of impressed I've kept it going this long.

I read through my first six months of posts the other day, and for sure I'm not the blogger I used to be. I was so damn excited about it the first couple of years, and lots of other people were excited about their sites too. It was totally fun, like the best new toy ever for everyone online.

Now I am not nearly as apt to spend an hour searching for the perfect link or whole days playing with templates or setting up elaborate contests or whatever. I still like writing posts and reading other people's blogs, though, so I plan on hanging around for as long as it's fun.

Which reminds me! Eric aka Krotpong just started a blog this week, mostly to share the mix cds he's been making for about as long as I've been blogging. He thinks it's very fun and is very excited about it. Ah, youth; he reminds me a bit of myself five years ago. In fact, you should leave my old decrepit blog and go visit his fresh new whippersnapper blog right this minute.

Well, go! G'wan! Shoo! GET OFF MY LAND! (Fires warning shots; shakes fist at no one in particular; collapses in a sweaty, sour heap on the sagging, peeling front porch.)

Damn kids.

Dinner menu

Chicken-fried steak with cream gravy
Mashed potatoes with cream gravy
Sliced tomatoes
Several bites of Eric's chicken pot pie
Several bites of Dan's hamburger steak
Several of Staci's onion rings
Many of Staci's french fries
Strawberry cheesecake
Iced tea
Coffee

All that, and I still regret not ordering the fried pickles. If you're ever in Blanco, Texas, be sure to eat at the Sunset Restaurant. The waitress was charming as hell, the portions were generous, and the food was good (and filling, even if my gluttonous romp through everyone else's dinners might indicate otherwise).

Update, 11:55 p.m.: My stomach hurts and even my arms feel bloated. My elbows feel bloated. I'm not sorry.

Mess

No noise out back tonight, just the sharp smell of skunk in humid air. Consequently, I spent most of the evening in my office, which is habitable and pleasant after I spent an hour and a half tidying and cleaning the other night. It turns out I avoided spending time in my office for four months because I was putting off 90 minutes' worth of shredding bills and finding a permanent home for art-show debris and wedding ephemera.

To be fair to myself, I am working very hard on not being a slob and have been trying to keep my bedroom and the common areas of the house reasonably clean and organized. But all that deeply ingrained, lifelong messiness has to go somewhere. There isn't much left now for my poor slobby heart but my work office and my car. I fear they may explode.

Wah wahh

No Mariah Carey or any music at all tonight, but now there is a water feature of some sort running right by the fence that makes me have to pee after five minutes or so outside. I am totally going to buy and learn to play the trombone. Badly.

Eeeeeahhhhhwhoahahwhoahahwhoaaaah!

Oh, next door neighbor, can't you listen to anything in your backyard but that one Mariah Carey song or the tired-ass rock station? How about some nice silence? What the hell is wrong with you that you want to hear the Red Hot Chili Peppers' Under the Bridge for the fifth time in a day when you could be listening to some nice owls instead?

She doesn't play her stereo at an unreasonable volume and I like to reserve the right to be noisy when I want to be, so there is no way I can ask her to stop. But goddamn, this is lame. We have got to get some speakers installed out back or erect a giant concrete barrier or something before my happy patio turns into a grim and soulless place.

Disjoint

Antique planes flew over my work on Friday.

The grass is coming in around the path. This pleases Sweetloaf.

Eric stands in front of the former crackhouse he was renting when I met him. He was looking for a place when he rode by there one day while homicide detectives were taping off the yard. He knew the house's reputation already and figured rent at a murder house would be cheap, and when he finally tracked down the owner it was: $425 a month.

It's up for rent again right now, and it's got to be at least two or three times that. At least they painted and cleared out the bamboo thicket in the backyard, and I'm sure the new owners got rid of the bolt latches that were installed outside the bedroom doors. Shudder.

I thought I'd have a lot more to say after not posting for a week, but I don't. I caught a cold, which seems to filter everything through sludge. I tried to ignore it because I was in too good a mood and having fun times hanging out with friends and Eric, but it cannot be ignored any longer. So, ok, I'll say it, I feel like shit. At least I've reached the boneless/exhausted/giddy phase, which I have chosen to amplify with a hot toddy this evening. And so I raise my mug and say: Achooooooo!

Times!

After the past two months of obsessive political news and gossip consumption, I need to not be on the computer in my spare time very much for a while. That means no posts for the rest of the week unless something really amazing or gloriously stupid happens.

Ok, have fun, bye!

Jeez

And also whoa.

The entire downstairs smells like tequila, but that wasn't my doing.

Eve

I would remind you to vote, but I suspect everyone who's reading this already has or plans to. You guys are cool like that. Maybe you could remind someone else to vote?

Tonight I was thinking about Election Day 1980, when my entire kindergarten class marched out to recess chanting, "Vote for Reagan, vote for Reagan." I wonder if our teachers were creeped out or if they thought it was cute.

Eric is a fan of classic cartoons, and tonight he has a Woody Woodpecker DVD in. I had forgotten or maybe had just never noticed--the last time I saw these cartoons I was really young, at least young enough to run around mindlessly chanting "Vote for Reagan"--but I am here to tell you at the age of 33 that Woody Woodpecker is a total asshole.

Sweetloaf versus the helicopter

This little radio-controlled helicopter is the best thing ever, at least for today. A kid left it behind at a gathering I attended yesterday, and after an hour or so of tipsy piloting, I knew I had to get myself one.

I've already mastered hovering, gotten it stuck in a tree at the park--I had to run home to get my telescoping pole and a stepladder so Eric could poke it loose--and completely disgusted the cats with it, all in a few short hours. I'd say I've gotten my $25 worth so far. Hell, I should have picked up 10 of them. Then I could really have a party.