Oh, my stars and garters!

You can always talk about the weather

Fig. 1. An illustration of diurnal temperature variation at 30.29N -97.74W on June 30, 2005.

It's 91 degrees at 10:30 p.m. It seems even warmer right now than this afternoon, when it was 100, probably because the heat is unexpected. You look outside, it's dark, you figure there's probably some cool night air out there, maybe a breeze. But the darkness is a total lie; you walk outside and it's so hot and still that it's difficult to breathe for a second.

Luckily, my office, car, and house are air conditioned, and if scuttling between those three doesn't work, I have a fresh stash of popsicles in the freezers at work and at home.

Headscratcher

There was a big sign propped up against a chair in the nearly empty HEB deli this afternoon that said "GROCERY DISCUSSION GROUP MEETS HERE." What the? Who the? Why?

"My favorite groceries are canned goods."

"That's all well and good, but I'm partial to the prepared foods, myself. The rotisserie chicken is pretty good for supper."

"I'm going to go out on a limb and say the bakery donuts have been spectacular lately."

"They're not bad, but you should have been here in...'98? No, '99. Now, those were donuts."

"Mrs. G., you've been awfully quiet this afternoon. Do you have anything to add?"

"I--I like peaches."

It's all very mysterious. Who knows what dark secrets are revealed, which harsh truths exposed, at the GROCERY DISCUSSION GROUP?

Maybe none; the only person at the discussion table when we walked past was the bearded guy in the Rascal who's always hanging out in the deli anyway.

This is where I live

The housesitting house residents are home now, so that means I'm home too. I haven't slept in my bed since June 1, and I'm looking forward to getting into it pretty quick. Too bad it's heaped with a month's worth of laundry and a scattering of random objects (books, mail, CDs, an anatomy chart, a box of tampons, an inflatable raft). I think I'll shove all that crap onto the floor for tonight, and soon I'll make organizing my pretty much everything the next Big Boring Project.

Routine

The fuckity shitbags are actually working out pretty well for me this week, as their presence dictates that I don't have to be at work until four p.m. Of course I never know what time I get to leave--last week it was as late as 7:30 the following morning--and that can be annoying as hell at best and brutal at worst, but so long as I get off by, say, four a.m., I love the evening shift.

I've been swimming every day before work this week and yesterday even had enough time to ride my bike to the pool. I get there, thrash around in the water for a while, get all good and tired, go home, have coffee, rinse the chlorine out of my hair, put on clean clothes, and go to work feeling relaxed. Smiley, even. Then, after work, I've been going to the housesitting house, petting the cats, drinking a beer in the carport, and sleeping like a baby until noon. That's it. That's been my life for the past three or four days. I'm not getting a lot accomplished, but fuck it. It's summer, and I feel amazingly good.

For Kristy and Receptionista:

Here it is.

Rock you like a hurricane.

Saving grace

I wasn't being completely honest when I portrayed Austin's flea market as a gigantic useless shitbarn. They did, after all, have this:

I love the trash bag detail on the border, but I'm especially fond of the delicately swirled sky and the ground inlay that looks like glossy sewage. Eric bought it for himself, but I had other plans and have since appropriated it for my own purposes. He's not entirely happy about that, but he until he figures out how to get it back from me he can console himself with the scorpion belt buckle he got, too. I mean, jeez, it's got a real scorpion in it. What else could he possibly want?

A few notes about the weekend

Voxtrot is so adorable, in such a totally non-insipid way, that I want to eat them. Chomp! Also, they have a cute girl who gets to stand on stage and do nothing but look slightly bored and shake a tambourine from time to time, which is great.  If you have a band and you need someone like that, let me know and I'll run right out and buy the finest tambourine I can afford, and I will shake it to the best of my ability. Also I have a triangle, if that's more in line with your needs. Ting!

I used to find the flea market hilariously cheesy. Now walking amidst all that cheap, useless crap just makes me sad. Sad for the vendors, sad for the customers, sad for the manufacturers, sad for all of humanity. I didn't even get a funnel cake while we were there, that's how sad it all made me.

On the other hand, I was greatly cheered by Academy. I got a pair of Levi's, a two-piece bathing suit, and another, nicer pair of goggles, and it only took me 20 minutes and $55. That, bitches, is good shopping.

Sparklers are pretty.

I believe that sitting on my front porch, drinking beer, and talking while listening to the big, loud party several blocks away that you're deliberately missing is an excellent use of a Saturday night.

If you must work on a Sunday, work only for three hours and with people who are fast, competent, and funny.

Accidentally conking out on the couch is a huge waste of time, but kind of satisfying too.

Soft good

Holy cow and hallelujah! I got a sleepy tear in the mail today from Receptionista, along with a note that said "Don't let the fuckity shitbags get you down." I am delighted.

I love the sleepy tear. It's going to ride around on my shoulder bag with me, and together we will be a sleepy team, weary but unstoppable.

Hot shoes

Check out Joel's new shoes.

That detail is extremely nice.

I kind of want these, but I think I'll just enjoy them on Joel.

Joel and I have long been fans of the Converse. We had a series of identical pairs of the black suede One-Stars for years until they briefly stopped making them. We treated our last pairs as gently as possible for months, knowing there would be no more. Then I went to New York and discovered that one store there, Magic Shoes, still carried them. I e-mailed Joel, got his size, took the subway down there, and lugged two pairs of shoes around Manhattan for the next 12 hours. He returned the favor a few years later when he went up there. Then they started making them again, and all was well in the world.

I'm not much for brand loyalty, but, like a lot of people, I've always had at least two pairs of viable Converse since high school. Men's size six, no matter what the style. I never have to try them on. And I always appreciate them on other people.

I'm sad to report that this is the only thing I've been excited about all day. I gotta work a lot, you know?

The best thing that happened to me today:

I was in the grocery store today when I heard an angry-sounding guy yelling "Hey! HEY!" across the store. I thought it was some asshole snarling at his wife or something, so I didn't look over, just kept shopping.

Then the guy's just a few feet behind me, yelling, "Hey! Lady! You owe me money!" I really didn't want to deal with anyone's craziness, but finally I whirled around to see what the hell this person's problem was.

The person was Wain, and he was trying not to laugh, so I in turn tried to keep my mean what-the-fuck-do-you-want face on as I punched him hard in the chest. At that point the woman standing next to us grabbed her cart and got the hell out of there as we dissolved into giggles. It was great.

A joke so old I'd forgotten about it until just now:

Q: What's the difference between a sorority girl and a barracuda?

A: The credit card.

Thank you, folks, I'll be here all summer.

Make me a cake

I had a request and a few questions about the cake, so here's the deal:

I don't have the exact recipe, but as near as I can tell, you use cake mix to make two round pans of white cake and one of chocolate. That'll be your buns and patty.

Slice kiwis and strawberries, and add yellow food coloring to Cool Whip. That's the pickles, tomatoes, and cheese (or, if you prefer, special sauce, a phrase that has always bothered me a little, so let's say it's cheese). Then maybe get some white frosting for mayo. Let the cakes cool, and arrange everything so it looks like the picture below. Sprinkle a few poppy seeds on top for extra bun effect. Finally, call and invite me over so I can make sure you did it right.

I sound like a crank; Hamburger cake!

I thought I saw a dead cow on side of the road today on the drive home from Dallas, but it turned out to be just a heap of discarded equipment. Other than that, it was a pretty uneventful drive.
I wish to Christ they'd built the Texas Triangle train. As I was fuming behind a slow-ass Geo Metro that was cruising directly in the blind spot of the 18-wheeler beside it, I was thinking about how we seem to lack vision for stuff like 200-mph-trains and stuff like that anymore.

I've probably traveled that stretch of I-35 at least fifty times in the past twelve years, and it's always a clusterfuck as they constantly make these chickenshit stopgap improvements, tearing it up, shutting it down, widening it, repaving it, and starting all over again five years later. It never gets any faster. It never gets any easier. It never gets any safer. I want my motherfucking bullet train. They promised. But it was too expensive, so now they'll be dinking around with this until it goes down in flames, too.

Do you think the interstate system would even get built at all today? Probably not. We'd probably be setting up orange traffic cones on the dirt roads so we could spread gravel over them. We'd close down the wagon-wheel lanes to just one rut to make way for the water-sprinkling trucks because, by gosh, highways would cost too much and do too little. Why, dirt roads would be good enough for us! Paved limited-access highways? Horsefeathers! Public money should be quietly siphoned off to create corporate tax breaks, not spent to build something of lasting use and benefit to everyone in the entire nation!

Poppycock!

(I realize I'm talking out of my ass here. I know next to nothing about transportation issues. Mostly I'm just bitter because I wanted a bullet train.)

Look! A hamburger cake! With kiwi for the pickles, chocolate cake for the patty, etc. My stepmom's sister-in-law made it for the Father's Day party at her house. She said it was easy. Anyway, it was whimsical and tasty, welcome characteristics at any gathering.

Why don't you marry it?

I was watching Cat Scientist last night and decided they should be my summer album, but they don't have one. See them if you can, and wish you could see them if you can't. I keep wondering if I like them as much as I do because I know them, but I think they just really are that good.

OMG I love swimming at Hamilton Pool me + swimming = BFF xoxoxoxoxoxoxo.

I'm really tired, in that pleasant, sleepy kind of way.

Tomorrow I drive to Plano to visit my nice dad on nice dad's day. Monday I drive back to Austin to return to another million-bazillion-hours-a-week schedule, indefinitely, due to a forseeable but much-hoped-against development. (Hence yesterday's fuckity shitbags.) At least I got my vacation and a little summer fun in before it happened.

All's I got to say:

Fuckity shitbags.

A cry for help

It's summer, and I need a really good pop album to listen to when I'm running errands or driving home from downtown. I was hoping the New Pornographers would be out by now so I would not have to think about this any further, but no. Let me know if you have any suggestions.

Also, I have to work at 7:30 tomorrow morning, so if anyone feels up to shooting me in the face between now and then, be my guest.

Thanks in advance!

My other car is a pair of $4.99 aqua socks

The weekend is shaping up nicely already. Battle of the Bands, Cat Scientist, Hamilton Pool, and, for Father's Day, Plano. I haven't been swimming, really swimming, yet this season, and I'm so excited about Hamilton Pool on Saturday that I just spent my lunch at Target buying aqua socks, goggles, and a float. I will look dorky but rapt.

Not much else to report.  I saw this guy's car hood pop up while he was going about 70 on the upper deck of I-35. He managed to pull over without incident by sticking his head way out the window, but he looked extremely frightened as I passed him. It's hard for me to get up at 8:30 in the morning. I still don't know Spanish. That's all.

Esspanyol

I was feeling all cool yesterday because I knew that "mofle" means "muffler," but then last night I opened up the Spanish-language newspaper that gets delivered to the house-sitting house. I felt much less cool then, because I realized that my Spanish is for absolute shit.

I tried to read one story about traveling in Mexico, and couldn't understand anything but the odd verb and the names of the cities.

Then I tried to read the stories that I'd already read an English counterpart to so I'd have a little context, and even then I could barely understand what was going on: "Michael Jackson was something something innocent for something something something something sexual abuse something something something fifteen-year-old boy something something something."

Ugh. That's what I get for trying to get most of my college Spanish out of the way through summer school and distance learning. I must remedy this somehow.

Meet my new friends:

Illustration thoughtfully provided by Larry.

Eric and I are looking after these guys for the rest of the month in our friends' cool, quirky house. They are all indoor-outdoor and sweetly un-neurotic, which makes our job easy. Smelly litter boxes and inconsolable yowling tend to complicate things unnecessarily, I think.

Also, all I learned yesterday is that "mofle" is Spanish for "muffler." I like it.

Hey, I forgot to show you my meat curtains:

So what do you think? I have a shower cap to match, all from Archie McPhee.

Ninny

I came home from the grocery store tonight to find my front porch overrun by baby raccoons. When I walked toward the steps, a few of them scattered, but two of them climbed up on the railing and stayed there despite my clapping, stomping, and super-scary growling.

This is what a dork I am. I knew they probably just climbed up there because they were dumb and scared, but I was still too afraid to walk past them to get into the house. The door was locked, and I had nine or ten heavy bags dangling from my wrists. Plus--and really, I am a dork--I'd just figured out I'd punctured a can of beer by slamming it into the trunk because it was spewing out all over my arms, feet, and food.

I was off-balance, covered with beer, and all of a sudden convinced they'd crawled up there so they could attack me somehow, maybe by leaping down onto my face as I fumbled with my keys, plucking my eyes out with their precious little hands and eating all my groceries as I reeled blindly around the front yard, shooting geysers of blood out of my eyeholes.

I fought with myself for a while: That would never happen, that's stupid. But aren't raccoons aggressive? You're being completely retarded, they don't just lie in wait to attack humans. Probably not, but do you really want to risk rabies shots and facial scarring?  I hate you. Hee hee hee.

So I did what anyone would do, stand helplessly on the front walk for ten minutes and halfheartedly throw rocks at the porch while hoping they'd climb down and go away. Then I remembered I had a key to the back door, so I thrashed through our dark, overgrown, spider-web covered backyard, found the correct key by the light of my camera's LCD screen. I am a genius, y'all.

Oh, and these are most likely the little bastards who live under our bathtub. I'm not sure how to do this, but I think it's time I encouraged them to relocate. I don't find them cute.

In other news, Eric and I attended a wedding last night. There were a lot of work people there, and it was good to see everyone again, especially since we were all dressed up, relaxed, and ready for a good time. The last time I saw everyone we were all slovenly, weird, and ready to throw ourselves into traffic after 17 straight days of work. So it was a good wedding and a fun party. Although as always, my mind started to wander during the ceremony.

I'm not particularly interested in getting married, but whenever I go to a wedding I always make a game of imagining what my wedding would be like, if I had any desire to put one together.  So during one of the readings last night, I almost disgraced myself by laughing because I decided if I got married I'd want someone, Wain probably, to read, totally deadpan, the lyrics to The Ace of Spades.

The pleasure is to play/
Makes no difference what you say/
(eye contact, lowered voice)
I don't share your greed/
The only card I need is/
(dramatic pause)
The Ace of Spades.
(dramatic pause)
The Ace of Spades.
(bows head)

I don't even particularly like that song. I just thought it would be really funny to wear a pretty, pretty dress and stand up in front of all my friends and family and watch everyone try to figure out what the hell Motorhead had to do with anything.

I told Eric about my plan and he agreed that would be grand, but for symmetry's sake, we should get someone from the groom's side to read from NWA's Dopeman.

It might be your wife/
It might make you sick/
(dramatic pause, solemn nod)
Come home and see her mouth on the dopeman's dick.
Dopeman.

So if after nine years together, Eric and I decide we want to get married after all, that'll be why.

Also the wedding had a mariachi band, which was way cool and helped me decide that I want a mariachi band to follow me around all the time and play a little horn flourish every time I do anything good, like yell something witty at the TV or make a perfect egg. I think I could afford it if I got a second job and reshuffled my priorities a little.

Psst! Wanna see some vacation photos?

I put the Seattle photos up on flickr. I recommend scrolling through the set manually instead of starting the slide show if you want to read the captions and embedded notes.

A few Seattle observations:

Just about everyone we encountered was kind, friendly, and totally into their town, even the bored hipsters. I guess if you know you're cool you don't have to front. 

The landscape is lush, dark, and beautiful, but people-wise, it's kind of a homely city. Most big cities have these ridiculously hot office people stalking around downtown, but not Seattle. There were cute people, and attractive people, and interesting-looking people, but very few hotties of either sex. Even the cute little kids looked a little drawn and frowsy there. In that regard, I felt right at home.

Downtown is impossible to navigate and I was tempted quite a few times to just drive the car into a tree and leave it there. I felt like a hopelessly bad driver for a while until I saw that even our cab driver had trouble and had to talk himself through his route back to our hotel. ("Well, I guess I could take Third--no, shit, wait, Fifth, and then maybe if I turn left here...") Then I felt vindicated.

Everyone kept asking if we didn't want to move there. And it's true that I loved it there and had a great time visiting, but I don't think I could ever live there. They had good beer, pinball, toys, books, and Asian food out the hoo-hoo, and that was great. But my other major quality-of-life issues are swimming, grilling, and porch sitting, and Seattle's weather is conducive to none of these. That's fine, it keeps the riff-raff out, I guess.

So that was my trip. I'll see you later. I have to go shave my legs for a wedding.

Home!

Really, I had so much fun in Seattle. The only bad thing was a medium-strength cold that made me cranky and distant for a few days. I'm not the most engaged and outgoing person in the best of times, so trying to navigate a strange city with a head full of crap and a fistful of Kleenex was a bit challenging. But I ignored it as best I could and had a great time. It would have been impossible not to. We saw old friends, made new ones, ate seafood, drank gallons of beer and coffee and came away with a bunch of pictures, trinkets, and so many stupid inside jokes you'd think we just spent a week at band camp. And for the super deluxe cherry on top, I got to watch a ferocious electrical storm in profile from the plane on the way home. It was so good it made my stomach clench.

But we will explore all this in detail tomorrow. Right now I'm going to eat some pizza and sit on the couch with my big drooling cat.

Vacay-shun

I thought with Internet access and a digital camera I'd want to blog my vacation. But it turns out I want a vacation from that too. I'm free!

Maybe I'll change my mind in a few days, but for now I'm just going to hang out. Besides, Receptionista (who, by the way, is a fucking amazing hostess and person in general) and Choo have the goods.

If I act like I just crawled out from under a rock, it's because I pretty much just did.

It seems impossible, but I started my vacation tonight. Tomorrow will be a mad scramble to get my life back in order after working 90 bazillion hours last week, and then I'll be sitting on an airplane to Seattle tomorrow night, chomping gum and bugging Choo to let me borrow her reading material.

I feel a little sad because one of the things I really love about visiting a new place is obsessively researching it beforehand, and I just haven't had time. But fuck being sad! Being sad is stupid! Besides, I've got a map, a killer hostess, and scads of recommendations. What more do I need?