Oh, my stars and garters!

Schedule

I'm finally done with all the bad work. This week: A little more work, then a really fun party, then a little more work, and then a really fun trip to Seattle. That's the plan, and I don't intend to deviate from it one iota.

What shall I dub my new succulent shrub?

Katherine gave me this succulent. It's very Seussian. It needs a name.

P.S. Bruise!

Zap

I like this shot pretty well, but I really wish I could have had my manual camera and tripod tonight. There was so much great lightning, but the "keep clicking the shutter and hope for the best" method of lightning photography isn't very effective.

(You know you want to see my bruise for today.)

Happy happy birthday

...to Eric! Happy happy!

Happy!

My cats are dorks: A blurry photo essay

Pfweet pfweet pfweet pfweet pfweet.

One of the shoes I'm wearing tonight squeaks every time I take a step. Ordinarily I might think that was kind of funny and cute, but I've been at work for 13 hours and it's. driving. me. insane.

Other than that and the throbbing headache behind my right eye, I feel pretty good.

Oh, don't forget today's bruise. It's really nice.

Bruise update, sullen teen deluxe version:

Well, you probably think this is really stupid, but if you want to see my dumb bruise pictures, I put up another one today. Not that anyone cares. God, what's the fucking point? Can I have $20 so I can go get pizza after the speech tournament?

In my office, there is problem.

I know you've been waiting for this all day.

You can rest easy now. Today's bruise is up!

The last week of night shift

We got off a little early tonight (by "a little early" I mean two a.m., two hours later than the shift is theoretically supposed to last), so I had my remaining coworkers over for an impromptu gathering in my backyard.

You might think I'm just saying this because I've been drinking, but it's a fact that I love my coworkers.* 

And while it does truly suck to work these obnoxious hours**, and I miss my friends and am frustrated that I can't really start anything new or plan anything past the next 18 hours, perversely, I kind of like it.

I like the slumber party/Stockholm syndrome atmosphere at the office, and that I work with people I'll gladly hang out with even though we've seen each other 70 hours this week already. I like that my work ethic is satisfied by the long hours, and that my lazy side is totally justified in watching the dishes pile up in the sink and the dirty clothes get deeper on my floor because each hour of sleep is like gold these days, and who has time for all that stupid cleaning shit?

I like that each extra hour I work is redeemable as a vacation hour later, so that by the time this nonsense stops next week I'll have over 400 hours to spend however I please over the next 18 months. I like getting off work and watching the sun rise, and I like not going in to work until four or six or seven in the evening, and I also like never knowing which one it's going to be. I like that even if I work 100 hours a week, I still don't take my job home with me.

And although I'm slightly dreading going back to the 9:30-6 thing in a few days because right now getting up at nine a.m. is positively unthinkable, I also like that this schedule is finite, and that in all probability it's going to be over for the next year and a half.

So yeah, I'm looking forward to having my life back, and I'm awfully damn sick of work, but rest assured, in my own stunted way, I'm still having a pretty good time.

*So does Roo, apparently. And he'll have you know he posted before me, and with no mutual knowledge of content.****

**By the time I go to Seattle I'll have worked 17 days in a row***, many of those 12- or 15-hour days.

***Really, that's nothing. My record I think is 23.

****Footnotes in honor of Kristy.

It's swell

Go check out the bruise art on my flickr page, with which I have done very little.

Pants and whimpers

My pants broke tonight. You can see where the back pocket separated from the seat, leaving a long, visible, and potentially humiliating hole that forced me to leave work to go home and change.

I call bullshit on these pants. I didn't ask too much of them. I've only had them since September, I didn't launder them that often, they weren't tight, and I didn't do much in them besides sit around at work. Despite all that, they fell apart, and at a very inconvenient time.

You know, pants can serve many functions, but they are primarily designed to cover the ass. These failed to meet even that one basic requirement, so they are no longer pants. I condemn them. They are dead to me.

I would also like to offer a warning: no matter how cheap or cute they might be, do not ever buy pants from Old Navy. 

I declare my birthday officially over as of the saving of this post.

Despite all the working, the working, this goddamn never-ending working, I had a birthday weekend that was simultaneously bitchin' and low key. Avocado margaritas, beer, brunch, cake, candy, a chicken chucker, reflexology socks, a weather kit, and much more, plus numerous nose-flute renditions of "Happy Birthday." Oh, shit, I was delirious, there was so much nose fluting; duets, solos, ensembles, encores, and phoned-in performances all throughout the weekend, and it never failed to crack or at least cheer me up. Thanks to everyone who wished me well. I had a really nice day.

Plus. Eight more days and I'll get my life back. Ten more and I'll be in Seattle. That's not so long at all.

Tofu

Tofu, you messed up my night. Tofu, you taste so fine but hurt me so bad. Tofu, you would be a staple of my diet, but you make me feel like I'm running ground glass through my digestive system. Seriously, tofu, what the fuck? I expected better from you.

Hey, I'm 30. It feels remarkably similar to the way I felt at 29 just two and a half hours ago. I remember standing in front of my parents' full-length mirror on my fourth birthday, wondering why I looked exactly the same as I had the previous night, when I was merely three. I feel a little like that right now, except that I'm not having my birthday party at McDonald's this year.

Yee-haw! That's the ugliest shirt I ever did see.

I went to a couple of thrift stores today to look for shirts. I struck out, but as always, I was amazed at how grimy my hands get after pushing through a few racks of clothes, and I was also entertained by how ugly clothes can be.

This is an approximation of a shirt I saw at the Salvation Army store. I wish I'd taken a picture:

You might think that looks kind of cool, in a kitschy sort of way, but I assure you it wasn't. The blouse was blocky and shapeless and made of a fake silky rayon material; the huge, elaborate cowboy-and-Indian scene was machine-embroidered with cheap, shiny thread. It was atrocious, and I wondered whose idea it was to mass produce these things.

Maybe the designers thought they were ahead of the curve on this one, that any moment the poorly cut cowboy-and-Indian-themed rayon shirt trend would blow wide open, and they would be there at the forefront, ready to start raking in the dough once women everywhere started clamoring for them.

Well, it's true I don't know much about fashion, but I think it's safe to say they probably lost that gamble. I mean, I guess at least one person bought one, but, to her credit, she's obviously changed her mind about it since.

Boring holes

There's not so much happening in Joolietown these days.

Work is work.

Eric's art show is coming together steadily. He's been drilling holes like a...a hole-drillin' driller (not to be confused with an a-hole-drillin' driller), filling the kitchen with Plexiglas dust, the smell of burning plastic, and a growing stack of handsomely framed pictures.

My birthday's Saturday, and while I'd love to plan some sort of elaborate festivities, I don't know if I'll have to work yet, so I'm keeping my expectations nice and low. Lunch with my sister and Eric, and hopefully drinks later. (Oh, man, you know what would have been a really cool birthday activity? Renting a ski boat and driving around the lake like an asshole, honking maniacally and making everyone waterski until their arms fell off, that's what. Well, maybe next year.)

Hey, I'm Sugar Ray Leonard!

Roone bought Fight Night Round 2 today. While I'm not much good at games, I kicked Eric's ass on my first try. Then I retired with my perfect record intact because the controller made my hand numb and I knew that by the next round Eric, an inveterate gamer, would start humiliating me while I kept ineffectually bashing at the buttons with my sad, stiff fingers. I turned him loose on Roone, and he was promptly disqualified for punching Roone's boxer in the balls. So that's pretty much been my night.

Do I get another award?

Ever since I posted about the vaginal rejuvenation surgery billboard last month, my traffic has increased by quite a few ticks.

Well, according to my referrer logs, there's a good reason for this. Really, it's true: I'm pleased to report to you all that this site, yes, this one, the one you're looking at right this second, currently ranks number 19 out of 1.3 million results for a Google search of the phrase 'big vagina.' 

And here I was worried my life might be pointless.

More pointies!

My friend and coworker Bryan is a man of varied interests and ferocious enthusiasm. One of these interests is gardening, so he's taken advantage of our building's high ceilings and wall of windows to transform the front office into a tangle of succulents and orchids, with a ceiling-high pencil tree as the centerpiece. Bryan's eventual goal is to have so many plants in there that there's no room to do any work. Presumably, at that point we could all just clock in and sit around for hours enjoying the lush beauty he's created.

Anyway, he knows how much I love Pointy, so he brought me some rabbit-gnawed succulents to rehab.

They're all very nice.

This one is my favorite.

Right now I'm soaking the pots, and when that's done I'll plant the little guys.

Bryan says you can train some of them into shapes by putting the pots in a window and turning them every so often. Like all plants, the leaves reach toward the sun, but the spines on these are rigid enough that the old growth stays in place. When you turn them, they kink as they grow, in sort of a solar bonsai technique. I'm hell on plants but these seem pretty hardy. I think they'll be fine.

Now, what has Texas come to that a decent, hard-working man can't even shackle his kids to the furniture for a few hours?

Austin-American Statesman:

Georgetown police arrested a man Wednesday night for chaining his 13-year-old son to a table leg as a form of discipline, authorities said.

Sgt. Bert Witcher said when Bruce Kriskovich, 46, would leave for work or to run errands, he would leave a 15-year-old, 13-year-old and 9-year-old in his residence near FM 1460. Because the 13-year-old would not stay at the residence, Witcher said, Kriskovich locked a chain around his ankle and secured it to the leg of a five-foot long table with metal legs in a bedroom.

At about 8 p.m. Wednesday, the 13-year-old found a key and unlocked himself, Witcher said. He contacted neighbors, who in turn called police.

Why all the fuss?  Used to be it was the parents who didn't chain their kids to the table that you had to worry about. Goddamn meddling do-gooders.

Flatline

Well so now but I don't have anything to say right now, unless it's that I love beer.

I got off work at 5:30 this morning and Roo offered me a gin and tonic. And while that sounded tempting, and it's really great to come home from a long night at work and have a nice boy volunteer to mix you a drink twenty seconds after you walk through the door, I just wanted a post-work beer. So I'm having one. To me, liquor seems like it should be reserved for either very festive occasions or times of skull-caving depression. Today is neither.

It's getting light out. I'm never going to get to sleep. Never, never, never. Anyone want to go get breakfast?

Hey, I warned you that I don't have anything to say.  The entire purpose of this post is to get that horrible picture down there off the top of my page.

The drill press is great!

I looked around the house for other things I disliked so I could drill holes in them, too, but I couldn't really find anything anything else. Well, that makes sense; it's my house, after all. And everything I don't like, such as the bathroom floor and the ugly plaid couch, won't fit.

(Hey, have you read this piece of shit? I hate it so much I've read it three times. The chapter in which she's about to jerk off a Butthole Surfer in a Deep Ellum alley but flees at the last second because her "body and mind are just too complicated" is exquisite.)

Ventilation, decoration, trepanation...

Eric got a drill press this week. Now we can drill holes in anything!

Phhhht!

(also, I ate too much beef jerky.)

Boo. Yay!

Dan's amazing party trick

If you're a fan of nose flutes, ukuleles, marching band uniforms, or the Ramones, you should download this .avi file (6.7 MB).

After work

(The effect was marred only slightly by the fact that my front yard smells of cat urine in the cool morning air.)

Nose flutes will tear us apart

Already I sense two camps will be forming at work: those who requested and received nose flutes and think they're the greatest things ever, and those who didn't and are about to be driven absolutely fucking batshit insane by them. Too bad I won't be able to hear the protests of the latter over all this sweet, cheery tootling.

Edit, 4:30 a.m.: Larry figured it out: Bohemian Rhapsody should be our centerpiece tune. He's a natural.

A few things

• The nose flutes are supposed to arrive tonight. Unfortunately, I'll be at work when they hit my porch. After "Happy Birthday," I think I'd like everyone to learn "Thunder and Blazes" (MP3 link via euchronia.net to what's also known as the “doot-doot-doodle-oodle oot doot do do” circus song) and "Debaser" by the Pixies. I have no idea how to organize a nose flute gang, but I'm sure it will all come together effortlessly.

• I learned how to make the perfect fried egg last night. It really works. This is a great achievement, as I love fried egg sandwiches but until now have only been able to produce scorched, rubbery, raw-yolked ovals of waste, disappointment, and failure.

• The wood chipper is still on my street. I have grown numb to it.

What's for dinner?

Is it:

(a) braised squirrel with pureed peas;

(b) an infected monkey uterus; or

(c) a microwaveable burrito?

Extra credit question: Will someone for the love of god run by Sonic or something real quick and bring me something edible?

Why?

I wish I had a wood-chipper chipper.

I have never seen this before.

I may never see this again.