Oh, my stars and garters!

Gouge away

I went to the art supply shop with Joel during lunch so he could buy a brush for his new paint-by-numbers kit. I picked up some lino print supplies there on a whim.

My first try was a mess.

The next attempt was a little better.

Pointies!

Wain has the correct inking supplies at home, so I won't have to use Crayola washable paints and a gunky brush that I borrowed from a coworker. I think that will help the printing process immensely.

Oh, and I just found out we get Monday off. Who wants to get drunk with me on Sunday?

Recipe for the most disgusting snack I ever heard of in the whole wide world, the mere existence of which made me gag when I confirmed that it was indeed what I thought it was:

Two cold Oscar Mayer Light hot dogs.

One dollop chipotle pesto.

Remove ingredients from respective packages.

Plop on plate.

Eat with fork.

Serves one Roone.

Rain of terror

It's been rainy and cool for weeks. It didn't even break 80 this afternoon

I guess I should be grateful that we didn't have to run the air conditioner today, but since it's late June in Texas, I can't shake the suspicion that this is an early sign of the apocalypse.

I am bored.

I am crabby

Also pissy, grumpy, and cranky.

Help.

Stench

The hallway at work smells like those really cheap, waxy foil-wrapped chocolate Easter eggs with an insidious undertone of peas from a Swanson's frozen dinner. We can't figure out why, and it's really hard to take. But other than that, work today is delightful. A real joy. No, really.

A sentence I have never typed before:

Damn, I ate the best homemade kim chee tonight.

Did you know?

You can tell the age of a walrus by the number of rings in its tusks. Also they molt each summer.

I bring this up because I saw a special on walruses tonight. In one segment a bunch of them got confused for some reason and followed each other off a cliff. They tumbled down one by one and landed in a big dead heap at the bottom while the biologists tried to figure out how to stop them. Later another herd was ambushed by a polar bear. It was really sad.

I don't want you on my team.

A kid came to our door last night soliciting money for the Kerry campaign. Eric talked to him while I hid behind the door and listened. It went something like this:

Kid: I'm with the Kerry campaign. You look like a Kerry supporter, am I right?

Eric (in a friendly tone despite the fact he has pancakes on the stove): Sure.

Kid (in the snarky hippie tone most often heard citing outdated statistics on boring community radio shows): Well, um, it's really crucial we get this out now, 'cause we're really down to the wire and things are coming to a head with, like, Iraq and the oil and, um, the lies (he goes on in this vein for a while as I stifle mean laughter because Eric has to deal with this and I don't) and like we really need to take this seriously, man, because we've only got 130 days to the election and we really need contributions of like fifty dollars and we prefer checks.

Eric: I'm sorry, but I'm not interested in donating right now.

Kid (aggressively): Well, why not? Is it because you don't have enough money?

Eric: No. It's because I have something cooking on the stove. Bye-bye. (Shuts door quietly in the kid's face.)

I'd like to point out that we live in a mixed-income neighborhood in a low-income part of town, and it's very possible that any given person on our street doesn't make enough to just whip out a magic checkbook and give fifty dollars on the spot, especially at the end of the month.

Also I should mention that we gave money to Kerry earlier this year and that we already agreed with most everything the little twerp said.

Look, I appreciate that people are pounding the pavement to raise money and get out the vote, I really do. I know I'm certainly not doing as much as I can.

But if they're sending out rude, stereotypically whiny dumbasses like that to spread the word, I think it might be better if they just stuck to mass mailings. That guy reminded me of the kind of people who put up misspelled posters for marijuana legalization rallies that are scheduled for June 31 and then wonder why no one takes them seriously.

Scribble scrabble

I put a few new pictures up.

I went out tonight, got soaked in the rain, and drank and smoked cigarettes in a very well air-conditioned bar. I may well have pneumonia when I wake up in the morning.

Have a lovely weekend!

Thwarted!

Ooooh. It was sunny and clear when I got up about an hour ago. I was just about to wake up Eric and get into my swimsuit when I heard thunder. Now we're about to get clobbered. I'm never going to get to go swimming again, never never never, I just know it.

Sorry about the outburst yesterday, but it was deeply satisfying. I recommend that everyone try it at least once.

Psst! Go fuck yourself!

Go fuck yourself! Go fuck yourself! Go fuck yourself!

Hey, this is fun! I don't blame the vice president a bit.

Go fuck yourself!

Nueve!

Tonight I went to Spider House and played an hour-long game of Uno with a bunch of friends. It was looking good for me for a while there, but I ultimately went down, down, down.

Earlier I worked on some T-shirt projects and doodled for a while. I finished the shirt I'm making for my dad. It's got a picture of the scar on his chest and says "I had coronary bypass surgery and all I got was this lousy T-shirt." His idea; he wants it to wear to physical therapy.

I'm jacked up on coffee and stupid on beer. A volatile combination for many people. Me, I'll probably just mess around on the computer and have to pee a lot.

Tryjan hoss

You know how I wanted a project? How yesterday I was all like, Oh, wahh, I have nothing to doooo, I can't figure out what to doooo, I need something to doooooo?

Well, I sure had me a project today when my computer started acting like a brain-damaged but willful St. Bernard. I spent the entire evening trying to get rid of this stupid evil recursive malware. I didn't know the first thing about that crap this morning. Now I know far more than I ever wanted to, at least the stuff that relates to my very specific and annoying problem.

God, tech shit is boring. The whole experience was like pulling my eyes out of their sockets as far as they would go and then snapping them back in, over and over for six hours. But I have finally triumphed. I think. I hope.

Eh. I'll allow myself to enjoy the glow of victory until it comes back or I discover I've accidentally deleted something vital.

How I learned to stop worrying and love my Kotex

I'm sorry, but I just don't have the strength to fight it anymore. It's so much easier to just give in and embrace the tampon.

Grody girl stuff

I'm tired of tampons. No particular reason why, nothing's changed, I'm just all of a sudden sick to death of them.

I know that's stupid. It's like being fed up with toilet paper or having it up to here with coffee filters. You buy the damn things, use them, and forget about it. The whole thing is kind of a pain in the ass, sure, but life is full of pains in the ass. I should gracefully grow up and focus my resentment on more important things, like the woman in line in front of me at the post office today who wouldn't move up as the line advanced, even though she was standing six inches away from me and had like TEN WHOLE FEET in in front of her, as all the while the line got more and more crowded and uncomfortable toward the back, the oblivious twit.

I don't care. I still hate tampons. I estimate I've used about 5,760 tampons so far and will need another 8-9,000 of them in my lifetime. That adds up to 14,000 ugly stupid annoying expensive tampons, give or take. That's two-thirds of a mile of tampons, stretched end to end. You could carpet a five-bedroom house with that many tampons and still have a few to spare. Not that you'd want to do that, of course, but that's a lot of fucking tampons.

These numbers exhaust me. Let us never speak of this again.

Phooey

My sister and I drove back from Plano last night. The visit was okay, but there was some weird tension around the house and everyone seemed a little tired and cranky. Lots of pouting and heavy sighs. I love my family, but frankly, it was a bit of a relief to leave.

Now I have another week off. I have a lot of leave time--a shit-ton, to be precise--that I want to spend before work gets busy again and I start accruing more. I'd planned on spending a lot of time outside, but now it looks like it's going to rain for most of the week. So I need a project. What's a good project? Focus, Joolie, focus!

MARCHING BANDS!

I love, love, love marching bands. They're so unsubtle. I marched in high school and still can't hear brass and toms without getting this weird proud, excited feeling in my stomach.

I was a doubly lucky girl today because I got to see both a parade downtown and a massive battle of the bands, both in honor of Juneteenth.

The parade was pretty small. The bands marched up Congress Avenue for about twenty minutes, and that was about it. On the other hand, how often do you get to run down to see a parade on your lunch break?

The band competition was absolute craziness. The drum majors were doing backbends and handstands, entire bands held their instruments into the air and simultaneously did the splits, kids juggled cymbals and played each other's instruments, and oh, god, it was so amazingly loud.

Three bands played Britney Spears's "Toxic." Two bands did versions of "Cold-Hearted Snake" by Paula Abdul, and there was a lot of Outkast and even "The Final Countdown" by Europe. Hee! I love to hear the tubas frantically try to keep up with the fast pop songs. (Oomp! oomp! oomp! oomp: He's as cold as ice. Oompoompoompoompoompoompoompoomp...) It's really funny.

You can't really tell, but this band is marching in a Texas-shaped formation. 'Cause, you know, we live in Texas.

This guy was great. The band he led kicked everyone's asses. They were intimidating even to watch.

Afterwards, my friend Jo and I went to Amy's house for drinks. She mixed up some mighty fine lemon drops and we sat around talking and listening to my old friend the police helicopter buzz the neighborhood.

Tomorrow my sister and I are driving to Plano to spend Father's Day with, strangely enough, our father.

Well-wisher

How the hell are ya?

The office banalities people exchange (TGIF! Hoo boy! You workin' hard or hardly workin'?) are bad, but even worse are the handful of people in the building who deliberately look away or gaze right through my face with a stony expression as they pass me in the hall.

Is it okay to completely discount the presence of another human being, especially one you see several times a week?

I don't take it personally. Not everyone is friendly, and I realize these people don't owe me a thing. But it still feels really creepy and awkward to have a person go to some trouble to pretend you're invisible every time you encounter them. We don't all have to be best friends, but a chin jerk or a barely perceptible lift in the corners of your mouth would be lovely.

My favorite thing to do, if I have the energy, is to be really friendly to these people. Good morning! How's it going? Nice tie! How are you today? Then they have to say something or at least grimace at me, or else they know they'll look like a total asshole and not just preoccupied or unfriendly. But it always seems to cost them so much that I rarely do it.

There is one guy I see around the building who is very loud and impersonally friendly: "Hey, buddy! Haven't seen you in a while! It's gonna be a scorcher!"

You'd think this might be obnoxious, but no. It's pretty delightful. This guy is so genuinely nice and kind that his effortless cheer pretty much negates all the stinkeyes, averted gazes, and "I-smell-shit" looks that others work so hard to perfect.

I fired my hair

It's reeeeally short.

Cognitive dissonance

Oh, goodness, I just don't know what to believe anymore. Would our president lie for political gain?

Murderer

I killed my chamomile plant. I left my windowsill garden in the sun for three days without water, and it was just too frail and wispy to survive. It looks terrible.

I'm going to leave it there for a while as an example to the others, so they won't expect too much from me and will learn to be more self-sufficient. My approach to plants is that if they can't smarten up and cope with a little benign neglect, then they simply don't need to be taking up my space. Of course it's a terrible technique, as evidenced by the line of sad pots filled with crunchy stems and spent dirt on my front porch. But for the few that survive--well, I have just that much more love to give.

Birthday cake ice cream

I tried some tonight. You know the atrociously colorful candy confetti that doesn't taste like anything but sugar that you get on supermarket birthday cakes ? It's infested with that stuff, and it dissolves in the ice cream and makes it gritty and strange. I have to advise against it.

I'm cold

It's very silly to wear a skirt and a sleeveless shirt to an air-conditioned office, I now realize. Actually, I've known that for a while, but it's a lesson I have to relearn every June.

Anyway, my skin looks like plucked poultry and my shoulders are hunched forward in an attempt to conserve my precious, precious body heat. Pretty sexy.

Wash me

About two months ago I traced "WASH ME" into the filth on the driver's-side door of my car. Every time I get in my damn car I blush and think about how I really really really need to wash it. But I am la-a-a-a-zy, and generally unfazed by dirt. But I am going to wash it. Tonight. Really.

I am writing this not because I think you'll find it interesting but because I'll feel like a total dink if I take the time to write about it but don't do it.

So. If you see my car and it's dirty tomorrow I give you permission to cluck and shake your head sadly and then write "HI I AM A SLOB" on the back window in white shoe polish after I've gone to bed. On the other hand, if it's clean and shiny you should clap me on the shoulder, say "Good work!" and treat me to a chicken dinner.

Lemonade

I made a batch this afternoon. Now I'm trying to figure out how it can simultaneously be too sweet, too sour, and too watery.

Seriously, what the hell?

Weekend-doing

Show-going
Record-shopping
Porch-sitting
Kugel-making
Beer-drinking
Pool-swimming
Sandwich-eating
TV-watching

That's it. I'm off tomorrow, too. I wonder what gerunds I'll get out of that.

Shooz

I bought these shoes off Choo for $20 because they pinch her feet. I wasn't sure about them at first, but I knew I'd made the right decision when a strung-out drunk guy at the grocery store interrupted his girlfriend's raspy tirade to turn to me and yell, "GREAT SHOES, SUGARMAMA!"

I especially like the lace tips:

Right now I'm eating what has to be the most disgusting meal of all time: Tuna Helper and Scotch. The sad thing is that I'll probably have seconds of both.

I am the ulna.

I had a pretty good Day of Mourning. Government offices were on skeleton crew staffing, so I worked today in order to have Monday off instead.

There wasn't much to do because no one was really around, so all the work got finished by early afternoon. I went to Whole Foods for snacks and read a magazine. Later Amy and I watched Shaolin Soccer on the computer. Goofy fun. Then I came home and ate a sandwich while watching the Simpsons. Rest in peace, President Reagan!

The antidote to misery:

Oompa Loompas!

Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory came on and kept me up past my bedtime. It cheered me up.

I wonder how the Tim Burton remake will be. I like Johnny Depp ok, but no way can he be better than Gene Wilder.

Contact misery

I'm not in a bad mood tonight, but I've been absorbing other people's horrific stories since about seven this evening, and so I'm feeling a little sad.

I met a coworker and a few of her friends for drinks after work. The friends were funny, friendly, and cool, and I was glad to meet them, but one woman got into her cups a little and started talking about some truly horrible personal things. She was relaying them like you would an anecdote about something annoying but slightly amusing, like your cat puking on the sofa or something, but her stories were so sad and gut-wrenchingly awful. And she didn't stop. There was nothing to say and no way to gracefully change the subject, and eventually I just followed my coworker's lead in basically saying "Well, good to see you guys, I better go," and leaving.

After that I went home and ate some soup. Eric and Wain came home, and we decided to finish watching the last two episodes of The Corner, an HBO miniseries based on a nonfiction book about a drug-addicted family in inner-city Balitmore.

The series is really well done and I highly recommend it, but Jesus Christ, it's depressing. The epilogue was brutal. Out of the twenty or so people they focused on, maybe three of them were able to catch some sort of a break. Everyone else ended up dead or ruined. I looked around the living room during the last episode and realized the three of us were all sitting slumped forward with our heads down, watching under furrowed brows.

So now that we're through with that lighthearted romp, I'm not really sure what to do with myself. Check my e-mail, count my blessings, and go to bed, I guess.

Denied again

First I couldn't get Texas quarters. Then the guy at 7-Eleven wouldn't sell me cigarettes because I left my ID at home.

I don't look remotely 17, or even really 25, so I thought it was kind of silly. But ok, whatever, I've been there, he's gotta do his job according to strict guidelines that free him from ever having to exercise his judgment.

But then Amy asked for her cigarettes, and he smirked and told her that he didn't need to see her ID (she's like three years older than I am).

Then Amy bummed me a cigarette, and as we smoked we both agreed that guy is a dick.

No quarter given

My friend Amy and I were taking a cigarette break this morning when I heard strains of music that sounded an awful lot like Kelly Willis. I remembered that she was supposed to play in front of the Texas history museum for the unveiling of the new Texas quarter, so we wandered up the street to check out all the hoo-rah.

What's more fun than attending a street fair during the first twenty minutes of your workday? Well, lots of things, but I still had a pretty good time. We walked around for a few minutes and thought about taking advantage of the free barbecue, but the line was too long. There were balloons everywhere, but they were all attatched to the tents. And neither of us had pockets, so we had no quarters for the quarter exchange. So we got free bottled water and stayed for one song.

I went back to work and got my camera and some quarters from Margaret so I could run back to the party and do it up right. But when I got to the quarter tent, a very blonde lady told me she could only give them out in $10 rolls. I looked devastated for the benefit of the television cameras nearby and walked away.

I didn't care about the quarters, and even if I did I'd be able to get them at the bank in another day or so. It was still kind of irritating. Not everybody has $10 to exchange for stupid commemorative quarters. (The lady behind me sure did. She thrust a $100 bill at the girl and asked for 10 rolls. People get really weird about their Texas stuff.)

Anyway, after being denied I looked around and realized the sun was hot, the barbecue line had quintupled, the little kids were whiny and I almost accidentally stepped on one, and I couldn't even get my hands on a Texas quarter at a goddamn Texas quarter party.

At that point I totally lost interest in the whole thing, even though Kelly Willis was still playing. I went back to work and gave Margaret her quarters back. She laughed. She doesn't care about Texas stuff at all.

Oh, my god!!!! Did you hear?

Reagan is dead at 93.

FLASH FLOOD 2004

Sorry, couldn't resist. That's what the local news stations do whenever there's any slightly anomalous weather. Who could forget ICE STORM '96 or SEVERE WEATHER OUTBREAK '98? (Not me, apparently. Dork.)

It's been raining hard on and off for three days, and this afternoon was the heaviest yet. It started pouring about four and didn't really let up until a couple hours ago.

So Wain and I had the brilliant idea to go out to pick up Thai food in the middle of this cloudburst. While we were out it started raining even harder, which didn't seem possible, but there it was. The streets filled with water and the cars were pushing up great big waves as they passed through intersections. On 30th Street, about three blocks from the restaurant, we saw a bunch of stalled cars about to float away and many more trying to maneuver out of there; luckily I was able to back up before we were stuck too.

Our trip had started out as a fun little adventure, but at that point I started to get scared. I was also really annoyed that I'd decided to drive in that shit. I know better. How depressing it would be if weather girl lost her car (which she'd paid $250 to get fixed just an hour before) to a little street flooding. I mean, Thai food is good and all, but not that good.

We got away from the high-water clusterfuck and drove around for a while, trying to remember which side streets were on higher ground, away from creeks. Wain was calm and talked me through it all, telling me we'd be fine as long as we kept moving. He was so calm that I started to feel a little silly about being as freaked out as I was. Since he had at first suggested that we would probably be fine if I drove through the street where the cars were stranded, though, I thought it was ok if I overreacted a bit. You know, just to balance things out.

Anyway, pick up food blah blah blah rain flood traffic, finally the rain slackens up a little bit and we make it home after twenty minutes of meandering around flooded intersections. Two hours after we'd first decided to order food (Roone was originally going to pick it up, but said he didn't want to get wet--hee!) we were finally full of tasty Thai food.

Right after dinner the sun peeked out under the edge of the clouds while the rain was still falling and turned everything a weird otherworldly yellow. I went for a short walk to get a better look and in that time saw a bunch of lightning, a rainbow, and raging whitecaps in what's usually a sluggish trickle through a ditch at the end of our street.

And now I'm exhausted, so I'm going to end my day by sitting and drinking beer while watching sensationalistic flood coverage on News 36.

Bad, bad, bad music

I have worked with a woman named Madeleine for more than five years without a problem. So why, when someone mentioned her today, did I all of a sudden get the Winger song by the same name stuck in my head?

Blecch. That song is so astoundingly awful, and I'm afraid that now the connection has been made, it's going to happen every time I see her.

Is there a better Madeleine song I can maybe substitute? She's really nice and I don't think it's fair to associate her with shitty hair metal.

Narcolepsy 'n' shit

Today is dark and rainy. I drank two big cups of coffee this morning to stave off the drowsiness that always accompanies days like this, but that didn't stop me from dozing off for a second on the toilet just now.

Back pat

I hate to brag, but last night I discovered that this site is the number-one result for a search of the phrase "Yodas 'n' shit."

Goddamn, that's something to be proud of. The sweet kiss of success has never puckered up so close to my lips. I'm really on my way now, friends!

That was stupid.

But it does remind me that Raising Arizona is playing for free on Wednesday night at the Alamo Drafthouse. I probably won't go, but it's nice to know that I could if I wanted to.

Office upgrades

My office looks just a little bit better than it did when I left for vacation.

The windowsill garden has taken off, thanks to my officemate's careful ministrations. It smells really nice, especially the basil. I'll have to thin out and repot some of them; I guess I need to find more EZ soil pucks.

Pointy of course is as delightful as ever, maybe more so now that he has some companions. Good ol' Pointy.

My officemate and his girlfriend have taken up painting by numbers. Several colorful and charming pictures now grace Joel's desk.

I love the hot-air balloon painting the best because if you look in the lower left corner, you will see a miracle of artistry:

That's right, it's a paint-by-numbers SUV.