Oh, my stars and garters!

Bye forever!

Ok, it was reeeally hard, but I'm all packed.

I might try to post while I'm in Chicago. I might not. I'll be back in Austin on Wednesday either way.

Also, super happy fun birthday time to Eric! Ok!

Fobun Pobartoby

Another sunny day. We ate, swam, and drank. Again. Sigh. So tedious.

Tonight we also went to a fajita barbecue at a coworker's house.

You might not think so, but proofreaders are really fun to hang out with, at least the ones I know. I am impressed that we can all sit around talking and drinking beer for three hours and bring up work only peripherally.

I wore my contact lenses today so I could see at the lake and I keep poking myself in the eye in an attempt to push up the glasses that are not sliding down my nose.

I should pack, but I've finally figured something out. Packing is one of those things that always figures prominently on my to-do list before a trip but in reality takes about 15 minutes. Even when I went to Europe for three weeks, packing only took an hour.

Still it looms large: I can't have drinks/go to the movies/show up for work today. I have to PACK. It takes me longer to do the dishes or even buy gas for my car, and I've never blown off plans to do those things. But packing, oh, goodness, oh, gosh, I can't leave, I have to locate, like, twenty things in my house and put them in the same bag, and what if I forget my toothpaste? My god, I'll be totally screwed, the trip will be ruined, they don't have toothpaste in Chicago, Jesus fuck, I can't do anything right, stupid, stupid, stupid!

I know packing is important; God knows I don't want to wear the same pair of panties for five days and buy duplicates of all the toiletries I resent having to buy in the first place. And in ninth grade I went to band camp for two weeks (in July, in Lubbock) and forgot to pack socks. My feet stank so bad I'm almost certain the girls on my floor coined a nickname for me behind my back.

Still, give me a break. Packing is really no big deal, and I think I'll put it off for a while.

Look at this. This is great! I am liberated from the tyranny of packing. I feel the way I did when I was in my senior year of college and finally realized I was never going to do my work until the absolute last dire minute no matter what I told myself, so I stopped worrying about anything until the day before it was due.

God, everything is so much easier when you just give up.

Dear 24-Hour Fitness Center,

I hate to be a pickypoo, but could you be an angel and maybe sort of give some sort of indication that there's a man mopping in the women's locker room before I go in there to change? I mean aside from him alerting me to his presence by rattling his mop bucket and whistling a jaunty tune as soon as I happen to not have pants on.

Thanks!

xoxo,
Joolie

A sucker's evening

Roone and I went to see Bonnie Prince Billy/Will Oldham/Palace/Palace Brothers/Palace Music/Whatever last night. It was good, although it got harder to concentrate the drunker I got. It didn't seem like anyone on stage was concentrating very hard either, so I didn't feel too bad.

Roone wanted to continue his conversation with a lady, so Choo and Rand took me home afterwards. I lured them in for more drinks on the back porch. The evening ended up with me destroying the kitchen in an attempt to make macaroni and cheese from scratch. Every available surface was a horrible explosion of cheese and noodles and pots and spoons, but the sun was starting to come up and I was weaving too much to deal with it. I wrote my roommate an apologetic note telling him I'd clean it up later so he wouldn't be mad when he got up in the morning. When I signed it I misspelled my OWN FUCKING NAME.

So just like that, I have a new drunken alter ego: Joiolie. I mean, I would never leave the kitchen looking like that, but that Joiolie--what a scamp! I would never write incoherent letters to the editor of Salon denouncing the entire publication as a nest of whores, but you never know what's gonna happen when ol' zany Joiolie's around!! Etc.

But there's no time to dwell on what a bozo alcoholic I am, because Saturday--Eric's birthday--we're going to Chicago!

I bought the Streetwise map yesterday, and my friend Cat sent me a list of bars and restaurants to try, as well as an article about the neighborhoods around the ballparks there. She really knows her shit; thanks, Cat! Now we have a huge long list of stuff we want to try to pack into four days, including a Cubs game, and we're going to have dinner or something with some old friends of ours who live in Des Plaines. Also our hotel, although it looks a little cheesy, has a rooftop pool.

Tonight I have no plans save for laundry and detox. Tomorrow I think is lunch at the Little Deli (pickled eggs and the best roast beef sandwich in town), a trip to the lake, and a gathering at a friend's. So far I haven't been nearly as productive as I'd hoped, but I have to say that I really like being on vacation.

What you need:

Iranian pickles! They're made with tarragon and are tiny and delicious. They are also really sour. Your stomach will start to pucker reproachfully if you eat more than six or seven, so they sort of have built-in portion control. We got ours at Pars Mediterranean Deli.

Cesspool

Eric and I have vowed to find the perfect swimming spot this summer. Natural setting, clean and temperate water, and no other people are our primary criteria.

The no other people part is almost impossible to find (that's the funny thing about public places), but we figured a semi-warm weekday before school let out for the summer might be our big chance. We set out for McKinney Falls State Park this afternoon, hoping to find swimming hole nirvana.

Things looked pretty good when we first got there. The sun was shining, the park was green and pretty, and there were only two cars in the parking lot. One of them even left as we were parking. We laughed delightedly at our good luck.

Of course, as people all over the nation now know, it's hardly rained at all in Central Texas this month.

The falls were stark and dramatic. They also looked awfully dry as we approached the swimming area.

We picked our way through warm trickles of gnat-infested water until we got to the cliff, where we were confronted by a stagnant, oily pool of algae and water that smelled faintly of sewage.

After we finished moaning and cursing the lack of rain, we stood at the edge of the rocks and watched the wind push a Styrofoam cup around the surface of the water for a while. Then we took a few pictures and went back to the car.

A couple in their bathing suits turned in right as we were pulling out. They both had big happy smiles, probably because they saw the deserted parking lot and were envisioning a restful, romantic afternoon splashing around in the creek.

Buena suerte, suckers! We left the park forever and drove across town to spring-fed, lovingly chlorinated Deep Eddy Pool.

Nothing! No thing!

I didn't do a goddamn thing today, unless you count going to the post office, cashing in coins at the bank, eating Vietnamese food, drinking wine, and screaming at the TV as goddamn things. I don't, but it was fun anyway.

Tomorrow I'll try to do something fantastic, or at least really stupid, that I can tell you about.

The bloom's off this rose

Birthday weekend is over. I liked it fine. Friday I ran errands and Eric and I went swimming for the first time this year. Later that night we went to Hole in the Wall to see Cat Scientist and play pinball. Cat Scientist was good, but pinball was kind of a bust because the guy who was playing before us messed up the machine trying to extract quarters from it with a lighter and a flattened drinking straw. The game would only accept quarters after much pounding and slamming, so we gave up on that pretty fast. That's okay. Watching the guy's straw technique and trying to figure out why he didn't just ask someone for a dollar was probably more entertaining than pinball anyway.

We also had a fun little party last night. Many of my favorite people came over and hung out in the backyard. Choo, queen of party accessories, brought over Roman candles and bottle rockets. We shot them off right before the last of the guests left. Fsssst! Fizzle! Kapwee!

After I staved off my hangover with Gatorade and leftover steak today, Eric and I went to see Super Size Me. It was grody and therefore entertaining.

The most interesting part of the movie didn't have anything to do with fast food. I don't even remember what the context was, but at one point a photo of W. came up on the screen. Before the narrator said a word the entire audience burst into laughter. A few people even hissed. Texas may love Bush, but Austin sure doesn't.

We still have beer left; someone should come over and help us drink it. And we have 150% of two liters of Diet Coke that you can just have.

Marketing genius

Hey!

I'm all, like, 29 now.

Some perspective: Ten years ago today I was drunk on Everclear, tripping on mushrooms, covered in frosting, and laughing witlessly with my equally impaired friend while we watched the sun come up from the roof of someone's duplex.

Tonight I'm not doing any of those things. Instead I am sipping a beer and writing about doing them.

I guess I have matured a little.

Goddammit.

Holiday-ay

I didn't think I'd be able to, but it looks like I'm taking the next two weeks off. Four days of that will be spent in Chicago. Friday is my birthday. Saturday we're having people over. I haven't figured out what to do with the rest the time yet. Swim, sleep, drink, and draw, I think.

I picked up Eric from the airport right after work tonight, and we went straight to the sushi restaurant for a pre-birthday dinner. Neither of us had eaten all day, so we ordered an obscene amount of food in addition to the freebies they kept sending us.

We always say we're going to try one of the fancier, trendier sushi places, but somehow I doubt they have incredibly friendly waitstaff who say "On the house! Ok!" as they keep plunking down free edamame, octopus-and-seaweed salad, and mochi ice cream throughout the meal. The end result was that we had a lot left over and took home small but extremely dense to-go boxes. I keep grabbing a piece of something delicious every time I walk past the fridge.

Later we hung out outside and played with the cat and talked for a long time, and now we're sitting side by side, drinking beer while he plays Crimson Skies on the X-Box and I lurk in the paranoid comment threads of lefty blogs. Which is, I think, an excellent start to a vacation.

Yodas 'n' shit

I went to Babies'R'Us tonight to buy an old friend's new baby some stuff. That place freaked me out. Tiny things. Jingly things. Pastel things. Primary-colored car-emblazoned things. Cases of diapers. Inverted nipple pads.

The store was about to close, so it was vast and empty and bright and the Muzak was soprano saxophone-heavy and really, really loud. The employees were giving me the "hurry up so I can count down my register and go home, you slow-ass confused-looking bitch" stinkeye. I know that look well. When I worked retail I had at my disposal an arsenal of highly effective facial expressions ranging from thinly veiled contempt to black and unmitigated loathing.

Anyway, I got flustered and ran out of there with a big stuffed frog and a gift certificate, feeling like a total ass. I have a lot reasons why I either don't want or shouldn't have children, but tonight I think the most compelling is that I never want to step foot in that store again.

A totally fun thing

Go here to play a slow-motion game of Scrabble. You set it up and after you've finished your turn the game sends your opponents an e-mail telling them to go. Then you sit back and wait for an e-mail telling you to go, and so on.

I've been playing my current game since Friday afternoon, and I still have 65 tiles left.

Feet 'n' shit

If I had a shoe store, I would call it Feet 'n' Shit. Actually, if I had any store, I think I would call it Whatever I Was Selling 'n' Shit: Toys 'n' Shit. Food 'n' Shit. Tools 'n' Shit. Pewter Figurines of Wizards Gazing Mystically Into Fake Jewels 'n' Shit.

Anyway, I just bought some cute flip flops, so I thought it was time I painted my toenails.

The trouble is that I am artless at the girly stuff like nail polish and mascara and not spewing phrases like "fuckhole dipshit" at public pools filled with toddlers and their indignant mothers. But my coworker, who says she is similarly hopeless (but still manages to convey a sense of class that I lack completely) told me a long time ago that even I could paint my toenails. All I have to do is slap the stuff on any old way and peel it off in the shower once it's dry. It's brilliant, and it works.

The only potential problem with my technique is that they look terrible if you don't get into the shower before you have to expose your feet. I was running late one day and went over to a friend's house to do yoga once when my toes looked like this, and she pointed and howled and finally choked out that it looked like I'd hacked the tips of my toes off. So I have to remember to get up in time to wash off my toes tomorrow morning.

(Hey, you know what's fun? Forgetting to eat, going out for drinks, and then coming home to write on and on about ridiculous crap like nail polish.)

Anyway, since I'm apparently committed to the writing-about-feet thing, I should also mention that my friendly friend sent me some sassy sneakers today:

I would have tried them on for the picture, but my toes are still wet. I can tell you that they look good, though. Thank you, friendly friend!

Oh, another thing about feet: Although I don't really think about my feet very much, I do kind of have issues with them.

When I was 19 or 20, I was casually seeing a sweet boy. After a few weeks it seemed like we were just on the verge of something; I could tell and I could tell that he could tell.

Then he confessed his foot fetish to me in the back of his pickup truck in the parking lot of a Kettle, of all places. He solemnly asked me to take off my shoes. I obliged, and he seemed neither excited nor disappointed, but I guess my feet were deficient because that was as far as we ever got.

I examined my feet for a long time after it was clear things were through, but aside from some minor calluses, I couldn't for the life of me figure out what was wrong. Can anyone explain this to me? (Can anyone adequately explain any fetish? m-w.com: "an object of irrational reverence or excessive devotion;" the irrational/excessive part makes me wonder.) If you have any insight, please let me know. I'm long over that boy, but I've felt a little weird about my feet ever since.

I don't think I want to talk about my feet anymore.

Reprieve

Bye for now, incompetent weenises. Buh-bye.

Quote of the day

"Have you seen the Smirking Chimp website?... Man, I hate that sonofabitch. I'd like to do a flamenco dance on his face. I'm gonna get me some of those flamenco boots with the high heels, strap him down, and start dancing. That's right: three hundred pounds of flamenco fury, right on your face."

--My friend Katherine's dad, outlining his George W. fantasies over dinner tonight.

Fun, games, clean underwear

Go, fun weekend, go! I got to go to two parties, have lunch with friends from out of town, have dinner with my old roommate, and drink beer with my current roommates. Also laundry. I did some laundry.

My favorite thing that happened the whole weekend: Choo brought a surprise to our friend Colleen's graduation/birthday party. Choo and her helpers stealthily set up a giant hideous light-up inflatable Easter bunny in the backyard after Colleen went inside.

It took forever to blow up because we didn't realize there was an open zipper in the bunny's back. Other partygoers had to corner Colleen and keep her inside with sparkling conversation. ("So, you're graduating AND it's your birthday? Wow.")

After a lot of tussling, the rabbit was inflated to its full height and glory. Colleen came out to the back patio not long after, but she was busy talking to someone and didn't even notice it for a good minute or two. Then she turned around and was very surprised. Or possibly horrified. I'm not sure.

After the fun little prank was over we set up pinatas and bashed them to pieces in the bunny's warm, pink glow. It was magic.

Revelations

I'll be damned. There's this thing I've been doing the past day or so. It's called spending time with my friends. I hope I have time to investigate this phenomenon more in the coming weeks, because it's pretty enjoyable.

I'm not spending any time with my boyfriend, though, because he is visiting his family in Florida. I miss him, but I'm glad he was able to go and see them. I love a man who loves his mother devotedly without being a mama's boy, and I love a man who can get all squishy about his little nephew but will not come home after a week of baby fun and decide that he needs to have kids.

I guess I'm not a rockstar.

I'm not a huge fan of the energy drinks, but they're a pretty good antidote for long nights and hangovers. Lots of people in my office swear by the Rockstar drinks, so when I heard we might be really busy at work tonight, I thought I'd try one.

Bad idea. They come in 16-ounce cans and are so sugary and caffeine-laden that I started crashing before I even finished the damn thing. Now I'm achy and twitchy, and when I talk the words that come out of my mouth seem misshapen and jarring. I think I'll stick to either coffee or bathtub speed from now on, thanks.

Ligers!

Wain sent me a link to a website about the liger, a cross between a male lion and a female tiger. I thought for sure he was bullshitting me, but I did a little more digging. Sure enough, if the BBC is to be trusted, it's true.

There are also tigons out there in the world, although they're less common.

I should mention that Wain is the person who first told me about seeing-eye ponies.

Yee-haw!

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeee. I just bought tickets to see The Pixies in Houston in October.

Recreation

I got off work a little early tonight, so that meant I got to go home and grab my boy to go out to eat. We ended up at Casino el Camino, and I can tell you that two gin and tonics and a bacon cheeseburger there will make you feel like you are a superhero who can do absolutely anything. Of course that was nothing but an alcohol and beef-fueled delusion, so instead of saving the world or rotating the tires on my car, we decided to play pinball.

I had never played this game before, and I wasn't too sure if I'd like it. Usually the sports-themed games are incredibly lame, except for Fish Tales, which features electronic banjo music and an old redneck man's voice that critiques your catches.

After I put in four quarters, I noticed we had 22 credits on the machine. I was immediately able to form my opinion: Striker Xtreme is the greatest game ever in the whole world!

I accidentally hit the start button three times for our first round, so after that we only had 19 games left.
Sigh.

We played a few more rounds before Reid arrived. We had never seen Reid before and will probably never see Reid again. He was drunk and friendly and just wanted to hang out and watch us play our wretched brand of pinball. Although as soon as he showed up I got a flukey 90 million on my first ball, so he probably thought we were badasses. But, really, Reid, we're not. Maybe I was showing off for an audience, or maybe you're my lucky pinball pal, but Reid, you have to believe me when I say I usually stink.

After Reid spent 15 minutes criticizing our technique and trying to explain something about overtime laws, we tried to get him to play some of our remaining 14 free games with us. He politely declined. Well, the hell with you, Reid. We abandoned our bounty and left.

On the way home we saw Roone's car in the Club de Ville parking lot. We wanted to go inside to bug him, but it was karaoke night out back and they were singing "We Built This City," which I can't even enjoy ironically. I can't even pretend to enjoy it ironically; in fact, I bet I couldn't even ironically pretend to enjoy it ironically. So we got the fuck out of there, figuring if we couldn't be there for even 45 seconds there was no way Roone would stick around either. And now I'm home and I have 11 beers and 14 hours before work, and I'm trying to come up with a workable equation for that. I guess I'll just play it by ear. Good night!

Dave Schwartz is amazing

Now that I'm working nights, I'm stuck with late-night TV. The choices are pretty dismal, even with the superduper deluxe digital cable package. Sometimes you can catch a good movie or a cool documentary on HBO or IFC or something, but mostly your choices come down to the knife-buying show, crappy softcore porn, COPS, or the tired-ass end of the day's news cycle.

On the other hand, I get to watch Dave Schwartz on the Weather Channel.

(If you know me, you probably know that I've had a crush on meteorologist Jim Spencer for the past 10 years. Please don't judge me; this isn't a weatherman fetish or anything. It's not like that, I swear. It's just that Dave Schwartz is a freak and a ghoul and therefore really fucking fun to watch.)

I think Dave Schwartz is stuck on the night shift for eternity because he's spooky as hell. His eyes light up and he can't keep this strange little smile from creeping on his face when he talks about destructive weather. He shakes his head and whistles with admiration when he reads off flood totals. He's almost gloating when he points out where tornados have touched down. Plus his delivery is emphatic and tinged with doom: "Council Bluffs, Des Moines, Iowa City: WATCH OUT. Take a look at these MONSTERS that are HEADED YOUR WAY." We watched him during the last hurricane and I almost peed my pants seeing him make these dire pronouncements while trying really hard to keep the glee off his face.

In addition to getting a hard-on from the threat of destruction, he makes a lot of really bizarre non sequiturs, and his train of thought goes careening all over the map. His transitions are downright painful. Last night was the best I've seen so far: "And Buffalo, your morning commute is going to be a real mess. And speaking of messes, let's go to Iraq, where it's going to be sunny and hot again. Tsk. If only the political and military situation there could be as stable as the weather. Let's go to the national map again, where some pretty severe storms are setting up in the Midwest...."

Anyway, he's fantastic. I highly recommend watching him if you find yourself awake at 3 a.m. with absolutely nothing better to do.

Souvenirs

I left Plano last night, so now I'm back in Austin. So are my roommates, who spent the week in San Francisco. It was nice to have everyone home again. I made tortilla soup and drank beer and was tired and happy.

May I just say, one more time, how much I despise the trip from Dallas to Austin? It's ugly, monotonous, and I-35 is clogged with traffic the entire way. It's also a little scary. If one person is going less than 10 miles over the speed limit in the fast lane, everyone freaks out and zigs and zags and accelerates, executing these tiny-margin-of-error, hair-raising maneuvers to get around them. But I guess I don't blame those people. It's everyone's god-given right to go at least 87 miles an hour; those who only wish to travel at 78 mph are either goody-goody chumps or freedom haters.

Really, the only good things about the drive are the Czech Stop and the monolithic dome caterpillar.

In other news, Wain brought back some Takashi Murakami buttons and stickers for me. They are ridiculously cheerful. Thanks, Wain!

My dad rules.

He was sitting up in a chair, making fun of the food, and generally being his foul-mouthed self less than two days after open-heart surgery. This morning he kicked my ass at the crossword puzzle, walked all over the floor greeting people, and made a pretty funny dick joke about this photo. Go Dad! This is a good ending to a scary couple of weeks. I had a feeling everything would be okay, but, well, you know....

Anyway, it looks as though he'll be fine once he recovers, which is still going to be difficult and will take a month or two. For now he's just determined to leave the hospital tomorrow in time to watch The Sopranos. I'll watch it with him, and split on Monday so I can be back in Austin in time for work.

And that's been my weekend. How have you been doing?

Glimmers of hope

I tend to stay in my little liberal ghetto, so I really have no idea what people outside of Austin are thinking. But I'm in conservative Plano this weekend (you can see how they went in 2000 here), and I overheard a conversation between two guys about how they're not going to vote for G.W. this time around because he's made such a huge mess of things. Then I heard someone else dissing Rumsfeld.

Later I went to Half-Price Books. That was cool because a) Plano actually has one now and b) it was packed on a Friday night. Excellent. The topper was that someone had put Ann Coulter's Slander in the True Crime section. I don't know if they meant the, um, slander was criminal or the book itself. Either way, it was pretty funny.

Somebody explain homophones to Salon.com...

'Cause I can't bare to read this story any longer, har har har.

Snippets:

"In fact, it was the Spanish television station Telecinco -- not Arab media -- that aired the grizzliest images from Fallujah, complete with unaltered video of the charred corpses being dragged through the streets."

"Perhaps nothing better illustrates the altered political and journalistic climate than how the ghastly images of the charred bodies in Fallujah were handled compared with the press treatment of the equally grizzly photos taken 11 years ago in Somalia...."

"I don't think networks are scared of being labeled as liberal," says Judith Matloff, a journalism professor at Columbia University who teaches a course on war coverage. "They're more concerned about losing audiences by showing something very grizzly ...."

Half-ass

I am very busy, and I have to go out of town for a few days. Posting will be light. Please don't go away.

Update to the update

3. The cigarette was satisfying.
4. Sitting quietly is restful.

Update

1. The frozen meal wasn't bad, for once.
2. The squid article wasn't nearly as cool as I thought it would be.

I'll let you know how three and four go in a little while.

Evening plans

1. Eat a frozen dinner.
2. Read about the giant squid.
3. Smoke.
4. Sit very, very quietly.

Making friends

Pointy looks about as forlorn as I feel. We both spend a lot of time stuck alone in my office. So I decided to grow it some friends.

I bought a windowsill garden last night in which fragrant chamomile, lemon basil, and lavender will supposedly grow if I turn the little greenhouse thingy, keep the soil moist, and give it enough light. I'm a little worried about the outcome, because a seven-story parking garage blocks out most of the light. Also over the years I have never managed to get a single thing to grow from seed. That's okay. This time I have a good feeling. And if it doesn't work and I'm stuck with a bunch of moldy dirt, then the terra cotta pots will make excellent projectiles.

Day off day off day off

Holy crap, a whole day off!

Last night I got off work at 10:30, so Eric and I went out to see The Fall. I saw some friends, got silly-drunk on a rainbow assortment of beverages, and bounced up and down like a dork. It was fun. Mark E. Smith scares me a little, though.

When I woke up this afternoon it was cloudless, dry, and in the 70s. There is no better weather. I rode my bike around downtown for a while, which is nice on a Sunday, because it's quiet and dead. I had a long lunch outside by myself and then rode home on the trail. My advice to you is to not ride a cruiser down an unpaved trail, especially one that cuts through busy leash-free dog parks and frisbee golf courses. It was very bumpy and I almost ate shit a few times. I had a good time anyway. I also saw a dog climb a tree at its owner's coaxing. The owner seemed as surprised as anyone.

I had planned to take a bunch of pictures when I was out today, but I was too busy riding and only took one:

I've always wanted to eat at the House Park, if only to eat brisket under that sign, but it's only open for lunch three hours a day, six days a week. That's not much of a window, especially since I don't usually eat breakfast until at least noon. Someday I'll go and tell you all about it, I'm sure.

Later in the evening I had enchiladas and a margarita with Roone and then came home and drank beer, did laundry, did some T-shirt transfers, and watched TV. Now Eric and I are going grocery shopping in a few minutes, and then I'm going to bed. I think that's a pretty good day.

Cheap deodorant!

My friend Amy is having a sale! Won't someone help her out?

Whew

I got off relatively early tonight and spent a few hours on the couch drinking beer and shooting the shit with my roommate, whom I haven't seen for a week. I feel very sane and also encouraged because I don't have to be back work for at least another 13 hours. I have a list of fun things I want to do tomorrow, but I don't want to elaborate in case I end up oversleeping and missing everything like a big losing loser.