Oh, my stars and garters!

Welcome to our winter wonderland!

Sadly, it's slated for destruction today, in order to make room for vodka, fish sticks, and pizza.

Soy un sloth

All hail the low-key in-town vacation! Eric and I went to the lake today and floated around on noodles for hours. My sister and I went to Target and then watched cable tonight. I don't even remember what I did yesterday. Oh, wait, yes I do, I ate fried chicken and went to see the Aristocrats with Eric and Roo. I thought it was beautiful. Truly.

And, let's see, tomorrow I'm going to draw pictures and defrost the freezer. But only if I feel like it.  The rest of the week, I have no idea. Whatever I want, I guess. It's been like that. (My parents are retiring tomorrow, and I just realized this is what the rest of their lives will be like. Bastards!)

Oh, and happy birthday to Roo Roo. Go over to his site and give him some sweet, sweet love, see if you can't make him blush and squeal.

Pictures of pictures

Hey, the photos from the photo show are here if you want to see them. (Dan and St. Murse have a bunch up on flickr too.) I wish I'd taken more during the reception, but it went by so fast.

I need to go back to End of an Ear and take some close-ups of the wall. Also I need to just look at it some more. I helped assemble it and I haven't even seen all of it yet. If I've learned one thing this weekend, it's that a thousand-plus photos is a lot.

Our new cable package RULES.

I didn't ask for 9,000,000 channels, and I'm not paying for them, but by mistake or marketing ploy, we got just about everything available when we switched cable companies yesterday. So if right this minute I wanted to watch "Emmanuelle Versus Dracula," I totally could, because it's playing on one of our many, many Cinemaxes. I mean, I don't, but I could, and that is a hilarious and beautiful thing.

(This post is mostly for my sister, with whom I gigglingly watched Emmanuelle movies on cable when we were growing up, with the sound way down so as not to wake our parents. Come over sometime, Jill, and together we'll learn how sophisticated libertines screw vampires: Ooh, Dracula, I vant to suck your...mmmmph. Hee!)

Friendly

Whee, it's over. Thanks to everyone who came and hung out and Dan and Blake for hosting and especially everyone who helped with everything; I had so much fun tonight. If you couldn't make it by today, the pictures will be up for the next few weeks at least.

Pictures of pictures tomorrow; for now, Eric and I just want to lay on the couch and explore our fancy new cable package.

Happy fun

We have no precious, precious internet at our house right now. I find this most inconvenient. The guys are supposed to come out and install the new service tomorrow, but you know how that goes.

So, anyway, if I don't get back up here for a while, don't forget to come by and drink beer and vodka and look at our giant wall of photos with us on Saturday evening. I think if you go you will like it.

It's from six to nine at End of an Ear record store at 2209 South First. We will also all be deejaying. (I have exactly four records on vinyl, so mine'll be an extremely short, disjointed set. Unless I decide to get that party started RIGHT and play Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue in its entirety.)

So, yeah, come on down. And now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go home and cut mats and clip 250 photos together.

I'm bushed.

Good thing I have a nice clean bed to sleep in! (Although that bedspread really needs to go.)

Thanks to Choo for keeping me company on the home stretch and bashing out a few celebratory games of air hockey when I finished.

Chaos!

Roone's been running in and out of the house the past few days, leaving a trail of cables and random shit--weightlifting gloves, game cartridges, a battery-powered Babe the Pig, etc.--everywhere he goes. Ball-less Wallace the Asshole the Cat has been taking advantage of the frequently open door to try to sneak in and terrorize the kitten. My room is completely dismantled (although the closet looks beautiful!) and there are garbage bags lining the hallway. Half the counter space in the kitchen is taken up by a drill press and bits, and there are mats and frames and photos and flyers and little curls of Plexiglas all over the house. I killed what I'm pretty sure were two brown recluses in my room today, and we walked in on two huge, weird walking-stick-type bugs fucking in the hall. Also Eric keeps getting bitten by mosquitoes or something in his sleep, and the washer and dryer have been going since the minute we got up today.

I'm taking a minute to drink a vodka tonic and smoke a cigarette before I resume tackling the many, many tasks on my list. It's going to be a long night.

Vacation woohoo partayyyy!

Today I saw an armadillo at Hamilton Pool Preserve. This was very exciting because previously I'd only ever seen them in roadkill form. And we saw a doe and a lizard and turkey vultures. Also I slipped on the trail and scraped my elbow. And we had the river all to ourselves for a half an hour.

This was all great, so great that when we hiked back up to the pool I was even in a good enough mood to find charm in the stoned, boring, extremely loud college kids sitting next to us. You know the type, the slightly dumb, sexy kids who would be the first easy-pickings victims of the evil lake blob in a horror movie. But in my blissed-out state, I thought they were kind of sweet. Aww, they're talking about bitchin' raves and what kind of flowers they would be if they were flowers, instead of a bunch of sophormores wearing puka-shell necklaces! That's sooo cute!  Hamilton Pool gets an A++.

We stayed until nearly closing time, and then we raced home so we could host a photo-framing party in our living room. I was too tired to properly focus on things like measuring mats and boring holes in Plexiglas, so I mostly just made pizza after pizza and got in the way. Everyone's pictures look really good. I think Saturday is going to be extremely fun.

Oh, and Roone moved his bed tonight, so he's officially moved out. One down, one more to go.

I'm kidding, mostly. I'll miss having Roone around to bug all the time. I really like living with Wain. And I think our last year (no, really! I know I've said this three or four times, but it really, really is the last) in this house will be a good one. But I'm about ready to settle in with Eric and Stinky and have a place that's totally ours, with everything just the way we want it. In the meantime, I feel lucky that we have a nice, comfortable place to hang out in.

Oh, wait, Roone just came back in, and if I'm not mistaken, I hear him clipping his toenails. I think I'll wait until he's moved his computer and his personal hygiene products before I consider him truly gone.

I don't know, but I've been scolded/Clothes look better when they're folded.

It turns out that to save my room, I must destroy it. It's like bootcamp for my bedroom. I'm going to have to completely break it first, abuse it, tear it down into a quivering mass of garbage, in order to build it back up. Let me see your war face, bedroom! (Trips over pile of books, lacerates scalp.)

Well, these things take time, which is why it looks a thousand times worse in there right now than it did last night. For someone who professes to not really care about stuff, I sure have a lot of crap.

Also, it took precisely one week of not swimming every day to lose all the benefits I'd reaped from swimming every day for two months. Except the killer tan, which as we all know is a full-body invitation to skin cancer. That's okay, my sunspots look ravishing in white.

Tomorrow

Tomorrow is Room Cleaning Day. This is big shit, guys; the last time this happened was in March. It's so bad in there that my sister, who in my opinion is every bit as much of a slob as I am if not worse (no, I lied to spare her feelings, but she's worse), gasped and pronounced all three of my names in totally unfeigned shock and horror the last time she was in there.

It's shameful. I try very hard to keep the common areas of my house at least reasonably tidy because I have respect for our household, but unfortunately that doesn't extend to my personal space, and any cleanliness in our living rooms is a direct function of my habitually hurling my personal belongings into the far corners of my room. And I've been working a lot! And I didn't have a dresser! And I'm a lazy piece of shit! I have a million excuses, see.

But tomorrow it all goes. Ugly clothes, out of the closet and off to Goodwill. Unopened mail, torn into tiny pieces and into the trash. Giant inflatable raft, well, I don't know what I'm going to do with that, but it's not going to be in the middle of my floor as it has been since early June, I can tell you that.

I'm really not looking forward to this chore, but I need some space of my own, dammit, and it has to be one that's not festooned with stripey socks, aquatic accessories, and credit card offers from last spring.

Discussion question

 Coors Light: Why?

Hostess

The occasional camera rip-off notwithstanding, I really enjoy having people over. The house is big, we have an extra fridge and ample recycling bins, there's a good view of the neighborhood from the porch, and everyone knows to bring plenty of beer and snacks. My coworkers came over at six, cleared out by 12:30, and I had the house immaculate by one. Plus the air-hockey table was a big hit. Really, these things throw themselves. Nothing too crazy, but I had a good time tonight, and now I'm just enjoying a little quiet time before bed. Happy sine die; the sweetest Latin phrase I know.

No more pencils, no more drafts...

I have the great, giddy last-day-of-school feeling tonight. Tomorrow is the last day at work before my 17-day, in-town vacation. Air hockey for all!

The photo show is in a week. I spraymounted a few of my prints to the posters that Eric designed and everyone else printed last week. They look pretty good. If you live in Austin, you should come to End of an Ear on South First next Saturday evening to drink free beer and Tito's vodka punch and see some pictures.

Rooroo is moving out this weekend. We're just going to eat the extra rent and turn newly freed bedroom into an office/studio; I'm feeling far too old and cranky to have to adjust to a new housemate now.

I've shared a house with Roo on and off--mostly on--since 1998, and while I'm glad he's going to have his own space for the first time, like, ever, I'm wondering whom I'm supposed to mock for leaving just a quarter of a shot of liquor in the bottle or scream at the TV with during presidential addresses. (Cue Chicago's "If You Leave Me Now." Or New Kids on the Block's "Please Don't Go Girl." Or "How Cool Will it Be to Have an Office-Slash-Studio in My House?" (trad.).)

Daniel Johnston is on the radio right now. I sometimes wonder why I don't have any Daniel Johnston, but I think it's the kind of music that's better to be pleasantly surprised by than deliberately played. Except, ugh, now some wanky-bad guitar solo is on the same station. Maybe it's not so great to be pleasantly surprised by a Daniel Johnston song if that means you have to be molested by wanky-bad guitar immediately after. Mixed bag, community radio.

I thought I had more, but my sister came over and I lost my train of thought after a few games of Uno and a John Larroquette movie on Lifetime Movie Network turned my brains into delicious chowder. Sad, I know. What on earth are you going to do now?

 

Balmorhea

This is going to be the best mini-vacation ever and we're going here too and maybe here and I've lived in Texas since 1980 but have never been to West Texas except to get out of it as fast as possible and that's a shame and I've been hearing about this state park for years and it's going to be amazing and I wish we could leave tonight but we're not going for a month.

Whew. I haven't been able to muster up this much enthusiasm in a while.

Oh, pictures from our trip to the Travis State School are up on flickr if you want to see them.

Long dumb day

I woke up at nine this morning. Nine! NINE. Something has gone terribly wrong, I tell you. The apocalypse is nigh.

Actually  I'd just had a bad dream, a state-level politics dream that was so ludicrous and opaque and painfully dorky that the very act of sleep itself was tainted and I wanted no part of it anymore. Not if that was what it was going to be like.

Not that I did anything wonderful with all those extra waking hours. I just drank coffee and watched reruns of ER in my fugue state/underwear until it was really time to get up.

Later Eric and I went to the other pool, the new-to-us pool. It's nice, but it's just not the neighborhood pool. It's a 15-minute drive and there were too damn many adults there. When there are lots of kids I get irritated because they do cannonballs in the lap lane and poop in the shallow end, but listen, at least they don't dog-paddle ostentatiously around the deep end in Speedos a size too small or pull their chest-length beards up over their faces to better sun their nipples. God. Is having a whole world of taxpayer-funded amenities maintained solely for my use and benefit just too much to fucking ask?

Then work, which was fine, but slightly stupid. Then home, where Wain and his girlfriend were putting the finishing touches on enough bacon-wrapped pork loin, mashed potatoes, asparagus, and stuffed mushroom caps to share. Really, that saved the whole day. You need to get yourself a roommate who randomly does stuff like that; it's great. So why am I still bitching? Because it's fun, I guess.

Not every day can be a star-spangled spectacular.

Nothing much going on, at least that I want to write about. I saw Murderball tonight. It was okay; I was hoping to see more actual rugby. Mostly I just wanted to get out of the house and eat a big bag of popcorn, so by those criteria it was a complete success, two thumbs up, four stars, 10/10, WOW!!!!!!

I'm getting stuff together for the group photo show next week, weeding through pictures and making buttons and sending e-mails and whatnot. I realize I am not the best photographer, but that doesn't particularly bother me. I feel the same way about photography as I do about pinball: I know I'm kind of lousy, but if I just keep aiming and bashing at the buttons, eventually something will end up in the right place. And if not, well, that's all right. It's still really fun. Although spending $45 on four rolls of film plus development and really only being happy with four or five pictures is a little irritating. I had been wondering for a long time why I was using my digital camera almost exclusively, and I think I have my answer.

What else? The neighborhood pool is closed as of yesterday and I'm in mourning. There are a few year-round pools in town that I'll probably visit until it gets truly cold, but none are very close to my house. The place was packed as it hasn't been in weeks yesterday, and the mermaid showed up in a fancy new black-and-gold fin right before we left. I wonder what she's going to do now?

I'm hoping to have two weeks off pretty soon, if everything goes according to plan at work, and it has to at some point, right? I don't have anything special planned, just an obscene amount of vacation time to burn. It'll be nice to do whatever I want whenever I want for a while with no pressure to Go Somewhere and Have a Really Great, Meaningful Time. That'll come later; for now I just want to get my car fixed, organize my stuff, and spend some time by myself.

Field trip

It turns out that wandering around the grounds of an abandoned state school in 95-degree heat is an
excellent way to spend a Saturday afternoon.

I ripped off the idea from an urban exploration site (be sure to check out the rest of their expeditions; these guys are fearless), and although we didn't actually go into any of the buildings (except for Dan, for about 10 seconds), we saw plenty of good stuff today.

Originally named the Austin State School Farm Colony, the Travis State School was a work farm and educational facility for the mentally retarded from the mid-1930s until 1996.

A few of the campus's buildings are being used by a charter school, but most of it is empty and slowly being taken over by weeds, wasps, and crows.

I shot mostly film today, so I'll have more pictures when I get them developed.

See what happens when you don't clean your room?

I cut my shin open on my perpetually open sock drawer. It looks worse that it feels. Still, I wonder where slobs would fall on actuarial tables? Statistically, being messy has got to shave at least a few hours off your life.

Perseids

Eric and I drove out east of Manor to watch the meteor shower tonight. After several false starts due to my paranoia about trigger-happy landowners, we finally found a nice dark bridge to watch from.

For a while, the shower was kind of bullshit. Unless you know where to go, there's no escaping bright lights, even out in the country, and clouds and haze obscured a lot of the view. We still managed to see a few fast little ones, quick and inconsequential as flicking a piece of hair off your face. That was pretty cool, but after about 45 minutes of that we were about to give up and get back in the car.

One more and we'll go, we decided, and that's when we saw the low, long streaker that was white and orange and purple and lasted far longer than we could gasp. Goosebumps, chills, that excellent frozen feeling at the base of my skull, all that. It was the best thing I've seen in a while, and the drive home made me realize how badly I want to take a road trip so I can see some other good stuff.

We all know I have no taste, but this takes the cake.

When I read bmarkey's post tonight about how he was going to see Iggy Pop in concert, I thought, gosh, how cool would that be?

And then I realized I have seen Iggy Pop in concert, at a huge show at Texas Stadium in eighth grade.

Unfortunately, I couldn't have cared less about it; at the time Iggy Pop was just one more obstacle that day to seeing (ohmygodohmygod) Guns 'n' Roses and INXS. And watching him was torture. I mean, really, why couldn't they just cut the shit and get to the good stuff already?

On the other hand, even if I had known who Iggy Pop was, and cared, I still might have missed most of the set. The woman in the crocheted minidress across the aisle from us who showered the audience with her cosmetics as she swung her purse around and jumped precariously up and down on her chair while screaming "IGGY! IIIIGGGGGGGYYYYYYYY!" would have stolen any show.

I should also mention that I am still grateful to my dad for taking my sister and me to that concert. At the time that was the absolute coolest thing I had ever seen, but I realize now that show must have been hell on earth for him. To his credit, he was affable throughout, except when Axl Rose first showed up on stage. Then, several times, my dad demanded of no one in particular why the hell that man up there was wearing nothing but a G-string and leather chaps. It's Axl Rose, Dad. Christ.

Iiiiifuckin'loveyouguyshh

I would like to publicly thank my coworkers for being lovely people to drink with, and also for being the kind of people who can span the conversational rainbow between the beautiful mystery of golden showers and the hideously murky details of state-level politics with equal amounts of insight and glee.

Glub glub

I got some underwater pictures developed today. Sometimes it's hard to get the shot you want when you're buoyant and exhaling bubbles all over the lens. But some of them turned out pretty well. You can see more of them here if you like.

Smell exhaustion

The other night at work we were talking about German compound words, like Schadenfreude ("damage joy") and Weltschmerz ("world pain"). I've been thinking about it since, and there is much to admire about these words, which are relatively compact and encompass so much meaning beyond their literal translations.

Anyway, Eric and I watched a news clip tonight about a woman in San Antonio who was upset that a plumbing company was dumping effluent on the outskirts of her property. They identified her with her name and the caption "Tired of the Stench."

We laughed about that for a while, and I decided that:

1) "Tired of the Stench" should be carved into that woman's headstone; 

2) I hope she gets that taken care of because that sounds absolutely repulsive; and

3) there should really be a word for that in German.

I'm proposing Gerucherschöpfung, or "smell exhaustion." As in: "The desperate property owner contacted the local news station, hoping that by calling attention to her plight, she might escape the crushing weight of her Gerucherschöpfung." Or, "I was filled with a great and terrible Gerucherschöpfung until my boyfriend scooped a dead squirrel out from beneath the dryer vent."

If someone with better German skills has a better word for this, I'm open to that, too. Then maybe you could coin a German word for a person who coins a German word for another person because the first person has better German skills than the person who originally wanted that word coined but, sadly, speaks no German whatsoever. If you can do that in 17 letters or less, I'll make it worth your while somehow.

Danke!

Floater

Friday it was poop, today it was a picnic table. What's going to close the pool tomorrow? A 747?

I liked how the lifeguards kept the table afloat with a rescue tube. Do you think they gave it mouth to mouth after they finally pulled it out?

Well, no biggie. We had plenty of time, so we drove to another pool, over by Eric's bar. It was okay. The mermaid was there, at least.

Jewish hash browns

I'd been craving potato pancakes for weeks, I'm not sure why, so I bought the ingredients earlier this week. Since it's Sunday and there's not much going on, I thought I'd just bust some out for dinner tonight, no problem.

God, I'm dumb sometimes, or at least delusional. I started when it was still light outside--7:30 or 8--and finished around 10:40, barely in time to watch Six Feet Under on the West Coast delay. But I thought, oh, lalala, I'll just meticulously clean and shred five potatoes right quick, and then in no time I'll painstakingly squeeze every iota of foamy gray liquid out of the resulting stringy mass. Easy peasy! Then, presto, I'll just heat up a half-inch of oil, spoon my sad, deformed little patties into the pan, and wait ten minutes per side, while the kitchen fills up with smoke and the paper-towel-lined plate fills up with misshapen, disintegrating potato turds.

No biggie, though! I'll try it over and over and fucking over again, with varying results, until the goddamn potatoes have soaked up every friggin' ounce of oil that hasn't ended up burning my crappy arms or gunking up the son-of-a-bitching kitchen floor. (The recipe said, "The oil is a mitzvah." The recipe can shove it.)

Anyway, once I've done all that and picked the stupid potato stings out of the retarded drain and hosed the shitass gluey starch water off pretty much everything in the christforsaken jackoff kitchen, why, dinner will be ready in just a twinkle!

Ugh. I don't know, they were okay. They were about the same consistency and flavor as IHOP hash browns when they're done right: loose, dark, and stringy. The onions and the sour cream helped. So did the sausage, which was supposed to be deer sausage and theoretically kosher, until Eric pointed out that venison is too lean and the whole thing would really go more smoothly if we mixed it with some Jimmy Dean. (I didn't really care if the meal was kosher. I just thought it would be cute.)

Anyway, they were fine. Extremely frustrating and ridiculously time-consuming, but fine. I have decided, however, that the next time I spend three hours on a single dish, it's going to be the best thing anyone has ever tasted.

Then they could fight!

You know, with work and Seattle and all, I never did buy Eric a true and proper birthday present. You think he'd like a Kinky Friedman action figure? 

Please don't poop in our pool; we don't swim in your diaper. And, apparently, neither do you. (This is the worst post title ever. Jesus.)

No swimming today. Some little kid messed in the pool before we got there, and they had to shock the water. Tragic.

Dream buffet

I'm hungry. I don't know why, but I'm all of a sudden having a terrible craving for the worst junk food right now, all the grody-good favorites I generally try to avoid: chicken strips with gravy, tater tots, pizza boats, Big Macs, food court-style cashew chicken, pork rinds, Frito pie, Sonic toaster sandwiches, cheese curds, Arby's roast-beef-and-cheddars, Chung King eggrolls, Delimex taquitos.

I want to cram any (or all) of those things in my mouth, wash the whole mess down with a 64-ounce Coke, sponge the dribbled sauce and stray hunks of partially chewed food off the front of my shirt, and lay motionless on the floor for a while, thumping my belly contentedly. And then I want to get into bed, turn the air conditioner down to 65, and sleep for twelve hours. This is all I want out of life right now. That's it.

Instead I will microwave a bland but healthful frozen meal, eat it in front of the computer, and continue to sit in my office for the next several hours, waiting for work. This will be a poor substitute for my fast-food fantasy, but it should put an end to the matter.

Update, 8:50 p.m. Eating a bag of chili-cheese Fritos cleared that right up. Yecch. Also, I hit the wrong button on the vending machine and accidentally bought a bag of pretzels first. Anyone want it?

I don't want to end the day with a post about putrified animal flesh.

Here, everyone, have a happy sun!

Dryer dyer

Oh, god. I do believe something has died under the house by the dryer vent. Or possibly in the dryer vent, although that's too horrible to contemplate, so let's just say it's by the dryer vent. Yes. Good.

Anyway, now the inside of our dryer smells strongly of rotting flesh, and my previously clean clothes, which had been sitting in there for days, smell faintly of rotting flesh. I can't rewash them until whatever it is goes away; running the dryer would not only allow the smell to enter the house but also heat it up to 150 degrees.

Oh, happy day! Eric just called to say he's taken care of it. He said there wasn't enough left to say for sure what it was that he pulled out from under the house with a shovel. He is my hero. I would rather have the house smell like rotting elephants for a week than crawl under the house in search of some dead thing for even five minutes.

So all's well that ends well. I guess the moral of the story today is two-fold: Dead animal is the worst smell in the world, and you should always take your clothes out of the dryer as soon as they're done.

Eric's learning to sew!

He just figured out the sewing machine last night.

So far he's made this, er, cigarette pouch, which he selflessly gave to me.

Front:

Back:

(Not pictured: Matching, um, pen holder?)

Thanks, baby! Keep at it, okay?

A trip to the train tracks

We saw a dead snake.

Dan lay down on the tracks in sympathy.

We declined to cross a rotted trestle.

The sun set in a most unspectacular fashion.