Oh, my stars and garters!

Revision

Vodka is evil. F.

A true fact

Vodka is good. A+.

Thanks, Oester bunny!

All right! My friend across the hall left me an Easter cup on my desk this morning. And it's not filled with your typical Jelly Bird beans and foil-wrapped waxy, dusty chocolate eggs.

Nosir, today I have honest-to-god treats: Jelly Bellys (Bellies? both look stupid), candied blueberries, Jolly Ranchers, and a hard-boiled egg. My coworker is a total babe.

Borrowing

It's fun to find things in library books.

You can't spell Mexican without "I can"

After a lot of hemming and hawing on my part tonight (me: should we go? eric: yes. me: but i just bought groceries. eric: so we'll stay home. me: but i also just got paid last week. eric: so let's go. me: but i'm trying to eat better. eric: then we'll fix something here. me: but it's so good. eric: well, let's go. me: i don't know. should we go? eric: YES, joolie. jesus.) we went to Curra's South, my favorite Mexican restaurant. I was so excited when they opened one closer to my house. Then I was so crushed when I got there and the food and the service were horrid. I'll gladly drive the extra mile to not get treated like shit.

I got an avocado margarita, which sounds strange, especially considering it has bits of cilantro in it, but trust me, it's delicious. I also got enchiladas, and Eric and I split the mussels borrachos, which are steamed in beer and a red chile sauce and were the reason I wanted to go there in the first place.

After that we went to the Whip-In and bought three kinds of beer, one that we hadn't tried yet. I'm drinking one right now. I'm sleepy, but I'll be going to bed soon enough. For now, I'm just sitting around rubbing my big belly and feeling fine.

Reaching

Q: What did the zero say to the eight?

A: Nice belt!

Wake up! Wake up!

Eric's Spidey sense must have told him that I was having kind of a crummy day, because he brought an insanely cute gift home. It's a Kogepan clock, and it cheered me up immediately. The alarm is a very loud electronic calypso tune followed by a muffled "Wake up! Wake up!" When you hit the snooze button, it says "Good morning!" Aww.

I was going to put it in my room, thinking it might actually be less annoying than waking up to John Aielli, but I've had my current alarm clock since high school and can literally set it in my sleep. Maybe I'll take the little guy to work, where I'll probably be spending a lot of time soon anyway.

I get results, dammit.

Remember when I found the anomalous pork rind? Well, I wrote the nice people at Frito-Lay a letter that night, and they sent me an apology.

They didn't even come close to addressing what the problem might have been. I was kind of disappointed, but I guess I didn't really expect them to tell me how sorry they were that a snarl of pig hair accidentally got into my food.

That's okay. They sent me three coupons for free chips, maximum value $3.39 each. The "sorry our product disgusted you, but here, have some more!" tactic has always sort of confused me, but free stuff is free stuff. I think I'll cash them in for some chile-lime Fritos and mix up a big batch of Frito pie for my friends.

Sometimes it pays to write obnoxious letters to consumer affairs departments. I've gotten free ice cream, cookies, and toothpaste just for feigning outrage and busting out a stamp. Calling the hotlines is fun sometimes too. I spent a long time on the phone at work one afternoon with a really sweet lady from Mother's as we tried to figure out if a particular iced animal cookie was supposed to be a camel or a turtle. (She could not say for sure but thought a camel was more likely.)

Paul Lukas of Beer Frame is a master of product deconstruction and calling 1-800 lines. You should check his website out if you're into that sort of thing.

Because my roommate rules

...I had curry-roasted cashews and ginger scones for dessert tonight. Thank you, Wain!

Tragic equation

Busy day at work = nothing interesting happened = no content.

Meow

Downtown was more interesting than I'd hoped.

There's a whole bunch of stuff going on this weekend that I, who rarely leaves the house these days, wasn't aware of until we got down there. There's a big motorcycle rally in town (I forgot to mention Eric and some random punk and I almost got mowed down on the access road when five bikers ran a red light earlier) and it's rush week for the sororities and fraternities. Plus the university is hosting some huge track-and-field competition. On a weekend like this, everyone finishes their obligations for the day and heads down to Sixth Street to get trashed.

We missed most of the bands we wanted to see while driving around hunting for parking in the midst of this obnoxiousness, but who can complain when the people-watching is this good?

We saw lost cars following each other the wrong way down a one-way street and the chaos that followed when a light changed and 20 more cars headed right toward them. We saw people gunning their motorcycles and spectators looking on with contempt and envy. We saw young guys fronting each other. But mostly we saw hoochies.

Hey, I'm all for working it. But there were hundreds, maybe thousands, of women under the age of 25 strutting around tonight dressed like hookers. Not just a little trashy, or a little racy, but the straight-up, six-inch heels, skirts grazing the buttcheeks, C-cups hanging out to within millimeters of the nipples kind of ladies. I mean hundreds of them. There are always a smattering of these kinds of girls, usually in groups, walking around downtown on weekend nights. But tonight they were out in force, a parade asserting the might and glory of a trampy army.

It was gross, but also kind of cool.

Yard work!

I woke up this afternoon feeling pretty good, so I went outside to take care of some chores before I lost my will. I washed out the carport, cut some tree branches, and hacked back the unruly winter jasmine that takes over the driveway if we let our guard down for too long. It looked like shit when I was done because the lovely, graceful tendrils were reduced to blunt, exposed sticks, but you have to be ruthless with that stuff. Function over form and all that.

I had grand plans to weed and wash my car, but my wimpy arms were getting sore and I was developing ugly blisters on my fingers. So instead I sat on the porch with a cup of coffee and watched Eric mow the lawn.

Yep. That's about it for today, except that the dull-normal kids working at Jason's Deli burned something in the kitchen. I don't know what it was, but it smelled awful and was big enough that the dining room filled up with smoke. We went out front and finished our food while watching everyone inside cough and hold their noses.

We're about to go downtown with some friends to see American Analog Set, so maybe something more interesting will happen there. I kind of doubt it, but there's always that hope.

Phantom misery

Almost everyone who lives in Austin for more than a few years develops allergies. I just got mine a few years ago. The year after I smugly decided that I would never get them because they only happened to self-indulgent whiners, I got walloped.

It doesn't bother me much. Mostly it just makes my eyes sting, especially when I'm riding my bike and giving the pollen that extra push into my mucus membranes. My eyes have been burning a little and occasionally tearing up the past few days. Basically, my face feels like it's about to burst into tears even though the rest of me is fine.

But here's the weird thing: just feeling like I'm about to cry kind of makes me want to cry. After having itchy eyes for two days, I actually feel kind of sad and desolate. Not because my eyes hurt, but because (I think) of some physiological sympathetic reaction on the part of my brain.

Now I can't tell if I've got allergies or if I'm a flaky emotional wreck, or what.

Oops! Time to go home!

Aw, nuts

I've been informed that season four of Homicide was delivered today. How on earth am I supposed to get on with my life? Fortunately season five won't be out until, like, August, but I think the first season of The Wire is coming out soon.

For someone who supposedly doesn't care that much about TV, I'm sure spending a lot of time in front of it lately.

Star Bar

I can't bitch about last night's $2 drink special, our nice waitress, or the company, but the Star Bar is truly yucky. CitySearch says "this is an elegant yet relaxed setting for uninterrupted, late-night conversations. The eclectic crowd includes a lot of well-dressed Austinites in their 20s and 30s."

I say it's a faux-classy shithole crammed with braying assholes who tuck in their polo shirts and wear too much cologne.

I'll put up with a lot for $2 drinks and free food. Fortunately that was a one-time deal for the bar's anniversary celebration, so I won't be tempted to go back there ever, ever again.

P.S. If you must go, sit on the patio. Even the worst places can't fuck up a patio.

Oh, yeah

I finished the last episode of season three of Homicide. The season finale totally blew. That's okay. Now I can have my life back for a little while, leave the house, talk to people, that sort of thing.

Mood swings.

I am extremely unhappy about the special session, but it's always funny to watch the public relations dance start:

Yesterday the comptroller called the governor an incapable half-wit.

Then this morning, word of the governor's decision to announce the special session this week got out.

And just a little bit ago, the governor tried to call bullshit on that story.

Really, these people are such jerks.

Lament: I really wish I could link to the Austin, Dallas, and Fort Worth papers, but they're all registration-only. I'm just waiting for the San Antonio and Houston sites to require a log-in too, so I can explore the untapped resources of the El Paso, Lubbock, and Corpus Christi papers. After that, I guess I'll use the Tyler, McAllen, and Midland-Odessa rags. And when they all lock their content down, I'll start making shit up.

Hello, my name is Droolie.

Hoo boy, there's nothing like having your face sprayed with a fine mist of your own saliva first thing in the morning. I went to the dentist today for a cleaning and a filling repair. My mouth is slowly regaining feeling, and the root of my tongue is tingling like crazy. It feels icky. I still can't eat, and a good portion of what I drink trickles out of the left corner of my mouth.

Now I feel very adult and accomplished. I paid all my bills and reregistered my car last night, and I got my teeth taken care of today. I may look like a spaz, but I am a woman who takes care of business, unless I get drunk and don't.