Oh, my stars and garters!

First buttons

Yay! The first real buttons with the new button maker. You wouldn't think a quarter inch would make much difference, but the smaller ones are a bit harder to make designs for.

I think I'll resume the noun project after the new year. That means awl, running shoes, and microspatula buttons for everyone!

Ok, that was a lie. Not everyone. But definitely someone.

Plea

Maplewood Elementary. Click on image for full effect and glory.

I think I hate 2004

What can you say about 120,000 dead?

AP:

Another zone where officials have hardly begun to get a sense of the human cost was India's remote Andaman and Nicobar islands, just northwest of Sumatra, where entire villages were wiped out. With only 400 bodies found so far, the region's administrator said Thursday that 10,000 people were missing.

Survivors who reached the archipelago's main city, Port Blair, said they had not eaten for two days and people had to contend with hungry crocodiles that were washed ashore. "Two or three crocodiles started coming toward us," said Sister Charity, a 32-year-old nun, decribing her rescue from a small island by the navy. "The navy officers had to fire their revolvers to ward off the crocodiles to protect us."

You know, I'm going about my little life, throwing fits about stupid shit like traffic and forgetting to balance my checking account, and meanwhile hungry, grieving people are staving off crocodiles in the midst of a disaster that makes Krakatoa look like a garden party.

Doctors Without Borders
American Red Cross
Unicef
Or whomever you like

The dumbest race

I had a slight advantage at first because my Mazda Protege has a manual transmission and I could keep it in first gear for a while, but ultimately Choo's Toyota Corolla prevailed.

I can only assume she has a 1.8-liter engine to my 1.6. I dunno, maybe she just wanted it more.

Lazy busy

Another friend was in town, and I've been busy mangling the mysterious project that I was so extremely naive to think I could complete on a week sandwiched by major holidays. So I've been drinking and cursing a lot the past few days. At least the drinking has been celebratory and the cursing has been cheerful, but I'm still not getting a whole lot done.

I must recommend a visit

to Monkey Town.

Ooh! Ooh! Ooh!

Courtesy of my parents. Now I can make a one-inch button faster than you can pour a beer, tie your shoes, or do anything else that takes ten seconds.

(I should clarify that I already had a button maker, but it is a children's toy made of plastic, takes much work to operate, and makes 1.25" buttons. ...Oops. I almost typed 1.25' there. Now that would be something.)

Putting the "I" back in "Christmas"

The weekend was good. My family isn't particularly religious or concerned with tradition, so Christmas at my dad and stepmom's house is a casual affair. We attended the annual neighborhood Christmas Eve party, where, for the second year in a row, I drank moderately and managed to not disgrace myself. (In previous years I have exhibited such charming behavior as toppling over in the hosts' front yard mid-sentence and muttering darkly to concerned-looking neighbors about another guest whom I dimly remembered dissing me in fifth grade. I'm very classy after my eighth glass of wine.)

With that out of the way, we spent the rest of the holiday hanging out and eating rib roast. We also froze in the backyard trying to find the stupid comet, but the stupid moon was too bright.

After dinner, Eric and I went for a walk around the creek to stave off beef poisoning and take some pictures:

Snow.

There's more:

I screwed myself out of posting

We got home from D/FW tonight. I was going to recap the holiday festivities, but when we got back our friend Ben, who lives in Portland, was hanging out in our kitchen. In the process of catching up with him I drank far too many beers to be able to write a coherent account of the weekend. Not much happened, really, but I do have some pictures to post because I saw some slightly amazing things.  Also I wanna show you my Christmas present because it's bitchin'.

Tomorrow, then.

Christmas Day

I'm drunk on meat. So much meat.

Merry Christmas.

Work Day

Yip yip! I'm off for the next 12 days. After the low-key, cozy Christmas thing at my parent's house but before the glorious New Year's fuckedupedness wherever, I hope to go on a day trip somewhere cool and start a fairly big project. Details on that later, if it works. If not, I won't bring it up again and you will never know of my shameful failure.

For the last day before vacation, it was really good. I went in early to have coffee with Joel, with whom I share an office but hardly ever see now that we're on different shifts. We had a brief but pleasant time, and he delivered the goodie bag his girlfriend gave me. (Thanks, Angela!)

After I checked in, Melinda gave me some quiche. I ate that. Then I did some work for a while. Toward the end of the night, a bunch of us were talking when Brant mentioned that he wanted to get back into reading some classics but found a lot of them, like Ulysses and The Sound and the Fury, impenetrable and not much fun to read. We agreed that enjoyment trumps worthiness when it comes to that sort of thing and decided to start an informal book club dedicated to the more delightful classics. The first book is The Age of Innocence  by Edith Wharton, due by the end of next month. And this might not be book-club material, but the conversation also reminded me that I've been wanting to try another translation of The Brothers Karamazov, which a former coworker assured me was excellent and far more accessible than the version I've started a few times but never finished.

Afterwards, some people from work and a few significant others met at LaLa's, where it's Christmas year-round. I drank Bloody Marys and talked to some people I haven't gotten to hang out with in a while, mostly about strip clubs and printing kits. Then I got home and opened a really cool holiday card that Lynell, yet another coworker, made and sent to my house.

You know, I work with some really nice people.

Blasphemy

I was browsing the execrable Successories site a little more and saw that they're hawking Positive Putty. 

Bastards. Why would you take something as fun and innocent and delightful as Silly Putty and saddle it with corny motivational workplace bullshit? "Reshape your attitude! Put the squeeze on stress!" What the hell is the matter with people?

I wish I could move their cheese, right to the bottom of the tank at the municipal waste treatment plant. Yeah, come and get it, you insipid easy-solution-to-nonexistent-problem-pushing mofos.

Distraction

I can't seem to do my work tonight. I have a big, boring thing to do right now, and the smart thing would be to go all tunnel vision on it and pretend I'm dead inside for the hour or so it would take to do it.

Instead I'll work for five or ten minutes and then quit because I keep bouncing up and down, looking out the window, absently lining up paper clips on my desk and making them fight, lifting small weights, checking the temperature outside, reading snippets of articles, going outside to smoke cigarettes, writing this pointless post, anything but work.

If only I had some Successories in my office to help me stay on task....

Little dork in the office

A little elf named Choo gave me the entire set of Little House on the Prairie books last night because at one point I told her how much I loved those books when I was a kid. Choo keeps stuff like that in mind when she hits the secondhand stores. It's a lovely trait.

I really did love those books. After Charlotte's Web, they were the first novels I read, and I'd read the series straight through probably ten times by the time I hit fourth grade. I even boycotted the TV show; I thought it was an abomination because it wasn't true to the books. So I read one of them again last night, and wasn't surprised that I remembered almost every word.

Other than that nice little thing, there isn't much else going on tonight. I feel very impatient tonight, but because I'm not waiting for anything in particular, my impatience is making me feel anxious and irritable. I wish something would hurry up and happen.

Somebody's getting maaaarr-rieeeed!

I've had the wedding song from The Muppets Take Manhattan in my head all day, ever since Vickie told me she got engaged last night, sparkly ring and all.

Plus, she and her boyfriend--I guess he's her fiance now--have formally asked me to perform the ceremony in my capacity as the Reverend Joolie of the Universal Life Church (whose online confession form is awesome, by the way).

Vickie and her twin sister, Valerie, also turned 30 today. Holy shit and happy birthday, guys!

Monkey Girl v. Christmas, Part 29

I give up. Is it a tennis racket?

I can't wrap presents. I suh-huh-huck at wrapping presents. I buy pretty shiny paper hoping that will somehow compensate, but it's always a huge waste because every year I end up with a pile of  lumpy, misshapen polyhedrons. If you want all your gifts to look like they were custom wrapped by Joolina the Thumbless Wonder, you go ahead and bring them to me, I'll see what I can do.

So that's a problem, and it was complicated this year when I bought what I thought was shiny foil paper at Big! Lots. Big! Lots has some good deals, but overall it's a shit! hole, so bad they have to put huge signs on the walls with slogans telling their customers not to feel so crummy about being there. Something to the effect of "Remember: You aren't defined by where you shop, but how much you save!!!!"  Ouch.

Anyway, I should have known 99 cents for beautiful shiny foil wrap was too good to be true, because it was. I got it home and discovered that it's shiny all right, but only because it's clear. What the fuck good is see-through wrapping paper? How am I supposed to surprise people with that? Oh, gosh, what did Joolie get me? I hate to even guess, she's wrapped it so well in this completely transparent sheet of cellophane...Hmm, could it be the thing that I'm fucking looking directly at? Oh, Joolie, you big fooler!

Gah. I was pissed. I had to go out to Target to buy even more wrapping paper, which was expensive and not nearly as cute as I thought the Big! Lots bullshit paper was going to be.

And now, I mangle.

Hoohoohoohwahhwahwah!

I feel very awkward and silly when I dance, but there are times I feel even dumber if I don't. Like at a dance party.

I was at one tonight, so I danced. It was all right, I was all right. Except I sort of made a friend without meaning to.

Listen, I gave this guy no encouragement, except for the "hey, I'm a human and you're a human" eye contact that is everyone's due, and still, he zeroed in and started dancing right behind me like stink on shit. I was aware of this because I was dancing with my friend Dan most of the time, and Dan would get this amused and slightly alarmed look on his face whenever Mr. Friendly came up behind me and started doing his somewhat creepy thang. Then I would turn around, and my new pal would pretend to be otherwise occupied.

At first I thought it was just coincidence. But then I took a break and went back out, and eek, within seconds there he was out of nowhere, shadowing me.  I was neither the hottest nor the most approachable girl there; why me?

Dan and I figured he was attracted to my shiny red vinyl purse. Except Dan attributed my friend's behavior merely to the purse's redness and shininess, you know, oooh, shiny! I suspected, however, that this guy was responding to something more primitive and insiduous.

The purse is red and shiny, yes, but then I realized that when I danced it was also slung across my shoulders and occasionally thwapping against my ass. From the back, I believe it may have looked enticing and irresistably sexual to him, like the engorged, shiny butt of an aroused female baboon.   

Well, fuck. If that was really the case, the poor guy is hardly to blame. I mean, you can't fight biology. I should have just stuck to my dull green army surplus bag. Then everything would have been fine.

Feast

Kill kill die kill kill. Live, flourish.

I went up to big-box retail mecca in North Austin this afternoon to try to get a few things done before my shift started. It's really gross up there. All the men look cranky and befuddled, and all the women look expensive and starved. You get there, and you always get lost, so you have to drive and drive through the many connected parking lots to find all the different stores. And you drive. And drive.

And then you stop, because all traffic rules and acts of common decency are suspended when somebody has a really fast, really big car. I'd be fine with that if it were just my little Mazda versus one hugeantic truck; I would know my place in the pecking order and politely wait while the driver of the truck did whatever he or she, in his or her vehicular splendor, needed to do.

Constructive criticism

It's not that I don't like Christmas. I think the lights are pretty. Elves crack me up. I like giving little things to my family and friends. I really, really like the cocktails. The problem is that I can't get the least bit interested in it until about mid-December. About now. Even then, I don't truly care until about the 23rd, when I start to feel a little festive.

Whatever, it doesn't matter, except that this means I feel no real urgency about making gifts or baking for people until it's far too late. This year's ambitious project, to make X thingies with cute little Ys on them, is being scaled back daily. The gift idea is now but a shadow of its former self. If I keep lowering my expectations at the current rate, my Christmas project is going to consist of stuffing dryer lint and cat turds into recycled junk-mail envelopes, taping them shut, and sending them out to everyone on the 27th.

I'm pretty sure no one wants that. I better get started.

Wrong! No! Bad! F!

Roone brought this terrible miscreation into our home last night.

Mmmm. Look at all that good stuff. Mechanically separated chicken is always a crowd favorite. No beans, though. I suppose I can take a small measure of comfort in that.

Listen, Roone ate nothing but canned lima beans for dinner the other night. He does stuff like that all the time. Plus he has a long history of assembling appalling snacks. Won't someone step up and cook delicious, healthful meals for Roone before he drops dead of malnutrition or a blocked colon?  I'd do it, but I can barely keep myself fed.

Return of the Stink Bug; Stink Bug II: The Big Stink

I guess that leaf-footed bug liked what it saw when it was peering through our front window all that time, because it snuck in the house.

It tried to be all sly and blend in with our busy kitchen curtains, but it was no match for my eagle eye.

I took charge of the situation by calling for Eric, who is a better insect manager than I am. For example, he calmly got a paper towel, carefully guided the insect onto it, and set it free outside while I flapped and danced around the kitchen, shielding my face with my arms and saying "Oh shit be careful oh shit oh no it's going to spray stink juice in our eyes and eat our faces off while we sleep," or something like that.

(God, that wall is really dirty.)

Anyway, I suspect that's the last we'll see of that particular insect friend. Farewell, sweet stink bug. We forgive you your trespasses and wish you success and joy, et cetera.

Geminids

Jill, Eric, and I drove out to the east edge of town to check out the meteor shower a little while ago. We saw a few decent ones, but maybe we were still too close to city lights because the show was kind of paltry. We thought going out over a one-lane bridge and pulling off next to a pile of discarded mattresses and a gate with a bullet hole-riddled "NO TRESPASSING" sign would be far out enough, but light pollution is a real bitch.

I actually missed the best one of the night, a long, bright streaker, because, like a dumbass, I was busy futzing with my camera. But I got some nice shots of Orion. (Click on the image for a slightly better look.)

Is that yellowish star up towards the top left Saturn? Because I want it to be.

I zoomed in on it:

Jill said it looked like the Jack-in-the-Box clown guy in profile. I said it looked like Saturn. The sky chart we consulted leans toward Saturn, but I'm still not positive.

Stink bug

At least I think it's a stink bug. Maybe some armchair entomologist could tell me for sure. Anyway, it's huge. Ugly, too, in a cool, prehistoric sort of way. It's been hanging out on our front window for a few weeks, driving the cats nuts, but I don't know if it'll survive the freeze we're supposed to have this week.

Today

So my mom died 16 years ago today, after a long and ugly bout with lymphoma. She was 40. We had a difficult relationship, but ultimately she was a good mother and a strong, intelligent woman.

This isn't something I talk or even think about in depth that often. I did for a long time, possibly too long, but by now there isn't much to be gained from it.

Even if there were, I don't think this would be the place to do it. Still, this has been on my mind enough this week that I wanted to say something. It's rare that your life is split so decisively into before and after, and there isn't much about me that hasn't been shaped by it in one way or another.

My sister and I make it a point to have dinner and split a bottle of wine each year, so we'll do that later. Also there's supposed to be a good meteor shower early Tuesday morning, and it's going to be clear and cold. I might drive out somewhere and watch it because I like that sort of thing.

Backhoe ballet

The backhoe ballet, at the Center for Maximum Potential Building Systems, was fantastic. A little slow, a little ridiculous, and unexpectedly touching.

Bend me, shape me

Late last night Eric was flipping through the channels and briefly alit on some softcore flick on HBO. The female lead had had so much work done and was so preposterous looking that for a few seconds I thought she was a CGI character. After I blinked a few times I realized no, she was a good old-fashioned low-rent porn actress. Then I started giggling uncontrollably.

It just seemed so improbable that a human female would elect to have such huge, immobile, perfectly globular breasts jutting perpendicular to the rest of her torso that I naively assumed she was computer animated. I guess I don't watch enough porn.

Pigpen

You know you're a slob if the members of the cleaning staff, while walking down the hall and determining which rooms to vacuum, point at your office floor, nod at each other, and bust out laughing.

I wanted to tell them that I'm not that bad, that it was unusually messy because I ate a lot of popcorn in there today. But protesting would have made it worse somehow, so I just got out of their way.

Meet me at the

Oh, wow.

Deer sausage is really, really good. Eric knows a guy who knows a guy who processes the deer after people hunt them but aren't interested in anything but the big, horny heads to mount on their living room walls. I don't know or particularly care what he does with it, but the results is lean, spicy,  delicious, and sitting in our refrigerator.

Except, crap! I forgot about chronic wasting disease until just now.  But the hell with it. It really is tasty, and what isn't poison these days?

(This blog is your little daily ray of sunshine, admit it.)

Meh

I'm sad and my back hurts. For the moment there is nothing to be done about either of these things, and there's not much to be said either. So, for you, a very bad joke from a very good friend:

What's the difference between roast beef and pea soup?
    Anyone can roast beef.

Ugh. Time to sit very still and be very quiet now.

Oh! There's my car!

I think my car-finding problem was solved last night when I parked under a tree last night. Birds crapped on it so copiously that I'm a little embarrassed to be driving it. And it's not the quantity so much as the quality; I mean, it's got texture now.

Maybe I'll just let it stay. It's definitely distinguishing. Plus it's as much of a personal statement as any bumper sticker--instead of "Keep Honking, I'm Reloading" or "Visualize Whirled Peas," I'm saying, "I'm so lazy and care so little about my car's appearance that I won't wash it even after 8,000 grackles let loose all over the finish."

Bad girlfriend

I don't recommend bitching at your boyfriend after he comes home an hour late from a busy night at work because you made some weird chowder concoction and were waiting for him and dammit, that's just not fair to you.

Nope, I wouldn't do that. Not if you're going to turn around the very next week and be two hours late coming home because you went out, got loaded, and then stayed downtown talking to your friend in her car for a full hour after you got shooed out of the bar.

Because when you finally get home you could discover that your guy's been sitting up, worrying. You might find that he's been keeping a plate of New York strip and potatoes warm for you. He might be totally cool about the whole thing and only tease you gently for being a drunky hypocrite. And, after all that, it's possible you'll feel a just a little tiny bit like a gaping asshole.

Hyundai Civic Protege DX

I drive a basic Japanese compact sedan. It's a 2000. It's silver. It looks like so very many other cars.

Even though I've had it for almost five years, I am constantly walking up to silver Hyundais, Hondas, Toyotas, Mitsubishis, and once even a Jaguar, with my keys in my hand. I stand dazed at their doors for a second, blinking, until I realize it's not my car. Then I pivot, walk away, and hope the owner doesn't see me and think I'm trying to steal it.

I could avoid this problem if I'd just ride my bike more often. It's silver too, but it's usually the only one on the rack with bright green stickers and a glittery seat.

Work update:

Two prospective employees were interviewed this afternoon. One was spotted from the smoking area as he entered the building's lobby, nervously adjusting his tie and cracking his knuckles before he spoke to the receptionist. Those who observed this agreed it was pretty cute.

The computer center across the hall has been lavishly decorated for Friday's Christmas decorating contest with a yellow-ribbon "Support Our Troops" theme. Other departments have responded to the challenge with lengths of garland and tinsel. As of this evening, no one in the proofreading department has elected to participate. Gentle e-mails reminding employees of this fun and festive event are sure to be sent through the remainder of the week.

Melinda down the hall is selling dinner entrees for $5 a plate. Tonight she has baked macaroni and cheese with collard greens and spinach salad with candied pecans.

The work appears to have tapered off for the evening, leaving 30 people with five hours to fill. Crossword puzzles, Internet browsing, and card games are likely candidates to pass the time, although it's possible some will elect to break out a popular board game that has a noisy timer and convoluted rules that involve the screaming of words and bursts of jagged, hysterical laughter.

I have a slight headache and could use a cigarette. Also I am beginning to regret eating nothing but Gummi bears for lunch. All things considered, however, my night is fine.

Cultural anthropology

Hooray! We got Issue #1 of Dirty Found this weekend.

If you haven't seen  Found, it's a magazine that collects and showcases the loose stuff people find and send in to the editor. Mostly it's photos, notes, grocery lists, stuff like that. Most of it is pretty funny, although some of it can be pretty poignant. Dirty Found is based on the same premise, except that, duh, it's all dirty. You know, pictures of boobs and wieners and an enormous stash of enema p%rn that didn't make it into the estate sale after the owner died. Stuff like that.

It's a pretty good collection, especially since all those naked Polaroids and awkwardly worded come-ons are treated mostly with gentle humor and respect. There's none of the "ha-ha, gotcha, you dropped your sexy pictures of your ugly-ass wife on the bus, you dumbass"-style ridicule you might expect. It's just good voyeuristic fun, and, like the clean version, it's a good magazine to leave lying around on your coffee table or your bathroom floor--everyone who ever visits your house will pick it up and get engrossed at some point.

I made a great dirty find myself about three years ago. I was leafing through a cultural anthropology book that Eric had bought years ago at a thrift store in Houston but had apparently never read. A glossy 4x6 photo fell out, and I about peed myself laughing before I tore through the house to show Eric and my roommates, yelling "HOLY SHIT! YOU WON'T BELIEVE WHAT I JUST FOUND!"

A naked mole rat in a pear tree

 

My friend Zoidberg, whose naked mole rat webring includes my other blog, sent me this great e-card yesterday. If you click on the picture, you'll be sent to a form you can use to send naked mole rat Christmas greetings all over the world. In German, no less. Gehen sie! Go!

Night shift

It's 3:30 in the morning. I have to be at work at four tomorrow. If I stay up for another hour and a half I'll get eight hours of sleep and still wake up in time for three hours of coffee, errands, and staring off into space. Plus Eric bartends, so while I'm working this shift we get to have one of those real-people style relationships in which we eat dinner together and sleep in the same bed every night. Revolution!

The only drawback, a fairly major one, is that a lot of my friends work during the day. I won't get to see them at all during the week. But I'll see them on the weekends, at least until work gets really busy later in the spring. On the whole, I'm delighted. The first day I worked this shift last week, I couldn't stop smiling. It's that good.

How did you spend your Saturday night?

I've never been that socially inclined, but usually I make a stab at going out at least one night each weekend. For a while I didn't always want to but felt a little uneasy about it: does this mean I'm getting old and boring/surrendering to my mercifully sporadic but obnoxiously inconvenient tendency toward crippling shyness/a pathetic loser?

By now, while I know that the answer to all of these questions could well be yes, I don't mind so much anymore. So unless there's something really good going on, I can stay home and do cool shit like make buttons and drink beer with my boyfriend with a clear conscience.

 
I knocked out sod, clarinet, and fudge tonight. Of course I had the help of Dan, Tonya, and Erlin, who kindly suggested these things.  They'll get theirs....

This was a fun batch because it was kind of hard to make sod and fudge look like anything but brown cubes. (Lopsided brown cubes, really; I guess I should take a drawing class at some point.)

Clarinet was especially good because I used to play the clarinet in high school and in fact dragged it out just a few months ago. Roone finished college, so I played "Pomp and Circumstance" over and over and over again until he threatened me with violence through his locked bedroom door. I love my clarinet. 

Next time: awl, running shoes, and microspatula.

Lamb O' God T-shirts

Molly Goatwax has some excellent T-shirts up for sale for 15 bucks. I've already got mine.

Molly won my heart forever when I came across her blog and saw she'd made a triptych that serves as a weather station, bottle opener, and tribute to a Baltimore Sun columnist. Form, function, barometric pressure.... I was in awe. Even if you don't want to buy a shirt, go on over to her site and look at them because they're cool.