Oh, my stars and garters!

Happy Friday monster

He will eat your face off if you're not careful, but he's pretty good company otherwise.

Winding down

I don't know why I so often feel as though I don't have enough to do and not enough time to do it.

It's still hot. Swimming helps, as does pomegranate vodka punch. And air conditioning.  Maybe you think Texas is a shithole now, but imagine what it must have been like 60 years ago. If it weren't for a/c, I bet someone would have shot everyone in the entire state and set the whole place on fire by now.

If you still want to see the photo show, this week's your last chance. We're taking it down on Sunday. Which is kind of sad, but we hope to do something that tops it next year.

Now I await a visit from Choo, sip my drink, maybe crank out a few buttons.

Oh, crap

I forgot to post today. Maybe because I have heatstroke. Or possibly because of my lack of activity today. Which, come to think of it, may also be due to heatstroke.

(I don't really have heatstroke. Or, apparently, a thought in my head tonight. Cue tumbleweeds, dust devils, howling expanses of wind-scoured land, stock footage of lobotomies.)

Aroooooooo.

Ok, now this is just getting silly.

Joolie and Choo's Party Corner presents: Shitty things with which to fill a piñata

Cans of beer

Corn syrup and red food dye

Hot dogs

Tofu

Bees

Get the flu make big CA$$$$H

I got a bizarre letter today from a biomedical research company inviting me to participate in a flu vaccine study. HELP FIGHT FLU, it said, and described an easy-peasy eight-month trial. (Four clinic visits! Thirty-two phone calls! 'Cause, girl, you hate the flu, right? And for sure you like Medical Science, don't you?)

Oh, hell, no. Does anyone else think this is weird?

I mean, pharmaceutical research is a little creepy to begin with, but I don't have a huge problem with it. If I didn't have such dinky veins I probably would have gladly rented my body to Pharmaco/PPD many times over the years. I've heard the outpatient pain medication studies can even be pretty fun, so long as you don't end up in the placebo group.

But it seems to me that something as drastic as deciding to lend your entire immune system to strangers for eight months should be like giving out your credit card number: I need to initiate the transaction, not the other way around. Like I'm going to show up and let some bozo start injecting some garbage-ass dead virus into my arms just because I got some poorly written junk mail.

Actually, I think the crappy writing is the thing that bothers me the most about this letter. I just now made up a new rule: If you send me an unsolicited letter that contains the sentence "And as media reports continue to speculate flu vaccinations sometimes run in short supply," then you don't get to tinker with my bloodstream. Period. I don't care how much you want to pay me. And not only will I not reply, I will snicker at you, and I'll invite others to do so as well.

Hmp.

Ba-ba-baaaaa

Now it's probably not even going to rain on Saturday. That's hilarious. I love it. I believe I'll go swimming and grill some tater tots.

Check out what I learned today!

How do you get to be 30 without figuring out that you can almost fit your fist in your mouth?   

I discovered this at work today during one of our wide-ranging cigarette break conversations. (Try it! You might surprise yourself.) Tonight I had Eric record it for the ages.

Ok, it's not great, but I got past the knuckles. That has to count for something.

Eric tried and declared his fist-swallowing skills superior to mine, but as you can totally see his thumb, I'm calling bullshit.

The best part was when we looked at the first round of pictures and decided we could really do a much better job of cramming our fists in our mouths. Besides, we looked horrible doing it. So we tried again, shooting for style points this time:

Oh, yes, those are much nicer. Honestly? We couldn't be prouder.

Hurricane's a-comin'

Hi! Remember a few days ago when I was bitching about the blistering sameness of the weather forecast? Well, I guess I got what I wanted. 102 tomorrow, 99 Friday, and 87 with an 80% chance of hurricane remnants on Saturday.

I'm particularly interested in this graphic from the National Hurricane Center this afternoon, which puts the storm, still at hurricane strength, riiiight about...over my house on Saturday.

Well, that could change. Even if it doesn't, we'll be ready enough. I'm more fascinated than scared at this point; it's Houston I'm really worried about.

Ok, I have to stop bugging out on the weather and make more line drawings of monkeys now.

Update: The NHC has shifted Saturday's path a little eastward, and my favorite Houston people will soon be on their way here for the weekend.

Double time

I forgot about one thing I totally love about working the day shift: driving home and watching the all the UT sousaphone and mellophone players dodging traffic on Red River on their way to practice. They look so burdened and shiny and adorable. I'd take a picture for you, but I'm afraid I'd run one of them over. 

What I like to look at

All this talk the past few weeks of flooding, erosion, and subsidence got me thinking about Houston Wet, a website I'd run across and spent a good afternoon browsing several years ago.

The site documents an unfortunately situated neighborhood in Baytown that went from a marsh to an exclusive subdivision for oil executives and sank back to marshland again in a matter of decades. All the houses were eventually demolished, and the area is now a wetlands preserve. (The site also has a section on NASA and the moon landing that I haven't looked at yet.)

The navigation is a little wonky; you'll have to disable your popup blocker for the site in order to use the remote control, then start with the "Back to Nature" chapters. But if you have a passing interest in: history, geology, geography, meteorology, hydrology, abandoned communities, old family snapshots, or how weird and improbable Houston is, I think you'll like this site.

Ok, summer, that'll do. No, seriously, thanks.

I love summer, but by late September I feel it should not be quite so summery anymore. High 99, low 72. High 98, low 73. High 99, low 72.

All right, we get it. Jesus.

Mostly I'm just pissed because I was hoping to make a somewhat seamless transition between pool-closing time and bike-riding time.

I know I'm being a wimp, but I don't want to ride my bike right now. I could do it, I could totally ride at least to work and back each day, but since I stayed nice and cool in the water all summer, I feel this would be extremely difficult at this point. I'll be damned if I'm going to start getting acclimated to riding around in 99-degree weather on September the nine-frigging-teenth.   

So I rot, like a wuss. High 99, low 72. High 99, low 72. Blah blah blah blah blah hi I'm summer and I will never end and you will all grow weak and enervated and eventually perish under my blistering wrath high 99, low 72 blah blah. Blah.

Party favors

More pictures on that there flickr.

Sock monkey stuff

Sock monkeys are pretty fun to draw. I discovered this last week when I made these buttons for The Lady over at Monkey Town.  You can buy them here if you like, or just head over and see what the monkeys have been up to lately.

Ol' Blotchy Butt plays hooky

No one should have to work on a hot, sunny September afternoon. So Dan, Choo, and I skipped work and drove out to Hamilton Pool with Eric and Jennifer. No armadillos or deer this time, but we saw a water snake, which Eric says was a water moccasin, possibly a baby (UPDATE: Dan has a picture of it here. If you are a snake-knower, please tell me what this is).

We also saw an enormous catfish cruising the shallow end, a bazillion little blue and silver fish, and three guys in their twenties who were diving around, searching for really big rocks. Upon finding one, they would immediately hurl it back into the water and huff with laughter. The quote of the day came from one of these geniuses: "Swimming with heavy rocks is hard." I guess I'll take his word for it. Those guys were awesome. They reminded me a little of Spongebob Squarepants's friend Patrick.

Anyway, the pool was pretty close to idyllic, except later I realized I missed the strip of leg right below my bathing suit when I put on sunscreen, and now it's sunburned and itchy. I looked over my shoulder in the mirror when I got home to assess the damage and noticed that my butt had big dark blotches all over. I was horrified. Why the hell is my butt so blotchy?  Do I have a skin disease? Ringworm? Giant ruts of cellulite? Why didn't anyone tell me?

I examined it a little more closely (let me tell you, it's mesmerizing) and realized the blotches are sort of shaped like flowers. Then I laughed, because my bathing suit this year is orange with white flowers, which apparently let the sun through and slowly tanned that way all summer. So now I have a flowery ass, which is tons cooler than a dumb old blotchy butt, if you ask me.

Yeah, it was a good day.

Manifesto

Jeez, I don't know what it is about working days, but the weeknights just seem to be this black hole of time waste.

I had been looking forward to having evenings free, thinking I'd do art projects, watch movies, eat dinner with friends, and go to shows. But when work's shoved all the way to the front of the day, I get off at six and subconsciously think, well, that's it! I'm done! Time to crack a beer and stare vacantly at the TV/computer screen!

But I'm not done at six, or at least I shouldn't be; I still have a good seven hours to fill before my New Reasonable Bedtime. It's not like my job is terribly taxing right now; in fact, one of the many reasons I have it is that the downtime allows me the time and energy to do other stuff.

And it's not like I don't have things I could and should be doing; I've got half-baked projects to work on, a trip to plan, a bike to ride, letters to write, etc., etc. And also etc.

See, once again, I'm thwarted by my utter lack of self-discipline. But you know what? I reject self-discipline! It's stupid and boring! It's for chumps! And suckers! It goes against everything I believe in!

Goddamnit, I swear to you people, I just now decided I'm going to be both ridiculously lazy and stupendously successful if it takes me the rest of my life. Which it most assuredly will, plus an extra fifty years or so.

Yes. Well. Ahem. That's cute and all, but I should go; the Daily Show's on in ten minutes.

Delightfully mediocre, with a stupendously bland finish

I went to work and didn't do much but fidget and take coffee, pizza, and cigarette breaks. My sister made dinner at her house, and it was good. I came home and watched a Malcom in the Middle rerun until Roone brought over a bottle of tasty white wine. I drank a glass, and now I'm going to bed. That's all. That was today. That's fine with me.

Hey, neat

Turns out I sold a photo from the photo show, a picture of Katherine's old '54(?) Chevy in an ice storm. That felt pretty good.

Today is a rainy day. I made facon and eggs, then set up an office in the recently vacated bedroom. Right now it just has a desk with computer stuff and a table for projects, a couple of posters, and some extra reference books, but we'll spruce it up gradually. It's nice to have a dedicated room for all that stuff instead of using the dining table in the living room for computer-crap spillover. I thought about painting in here but have since decided I don't want to paint anything I don't own.

Really, that's about it. Party weekend woohoo!

Who you gotta blow to get some Udder Butter on a Saturday afternoon in this town?

Oh, this is awful. Stinky the Cat has crusty, irritated nipples right now, we presume because one of his misguided acolytes is trying to nurse on him. We discovered this a little while ago, and, as with all things cat (or human, come to think of it) that don't threaten imminent death or disfigurement, we decided to wait a while and see what happened before getting the vet involved.

Well, they still haven't healed, so I started exploring cat nipple-care options on Thursday.

I quickly discovered the remedy through a slightly humiliating conversation at Spider House that went like this:

Lori (who just moved back here and has worked at a vet's office for the past year): How's Stinky?

Me: He's fine. Except he has crusty nipples.

Lori: Well, you could some Udder Butter, or some Bag Balm.

Steve (whom I barely know): Stinky is your...boyfriend?

I have thought about this conversation since, and I have decided I am grateful beyond measure that I don't have a crusty-nippled boyfriend named Stinky. I can't deny it, life is good sometimes.

So anyway, Eric (whose nipples are fine, by the way) and I spent a good part of this afternoon searching for Udder Butter.

None at the pet store. The salesgirl got very quiet for a moment and then shook her head sadly and said, "I'm sorry, I can't help you," when Eric told her we needed it for our cat's crusty nipples. Then she disappeared into the stock room so fast I thought maybe we'd hallucinated her.

None at HEB, although this time we were smart enough not to tell the woman in the cosmetics aisle why we we needed it.

Both feed stores within striking range were closed before six p.m. and are closed Sundays, so that didn't help us.

None at Wheatsville, that I saw. I didn't have to the heart to ask anyone about it there.

We're going to try Walgreens in a little while, and if they don't have it, Stinky will have to wait until Monday, I guess.

I mean, I don't want him to be uncomfortable, but I'm not spending my entire weekend looking for nipple salve. And while I certainly don't want his little nipples to fall off, it's not like he needs them, right?

Update: We found a tin of Bag Balm at Walgreens. Bag Balm and Udder Butter, by the way, are ointments for cows. And cats. And, apparently, humans; it's like the miracle skin-care equivalent of Mane 'n' Tail shampoo. (Not all that) interestingly, there was no sales tax on the purchase, I guess because it's primarily for agricultural use. Well, that's fine; I think having a cat with pink, supple nipples is as worthy a cause as any for tax-exemption purposes.

And with that, I promise to never write about cat nipples again.

Hey, you know what's good?

Cochinita pibil tacos at El Chilito on Manor Road. The only thing tempering my enjoyment of them is the guilt that stems from cheating on Mi Madre's, which is a few doors down and has faithfully provided me with Number 0 (potato, egg, bacon, and cheese) tacos for years. Also, they're maybe a little too tart to be eating more than one. But still.

Bad news, guys.

We can't go to West Texas this month.

No, because we're going here in November instead.

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Eee! (taly!)

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

Everybody wants prosthetic kneecaps on their real heads.

This prosthetic leg makes an okay hat, but Melinda, the recipient of said leg, thinks it would better serve her as either a lampshade or a planter.

If you happen to see the most hideous shoes in the world...

These are all Emily's fault. I knew they were gonna be really ugly no matter what, so I decided to take it all the way and ordered the fuchsia pair.

They're totally comfortable; light, loose, and squishy. I only wish I'd had them all summer.

Day shift

I couldn't get to sleep until four in the morning, so now I'm stupid tired. Please, everyone, feel sorry for me. I know there are hurricane victims and war orphans and hurting people the world over to worry about tonight, but I'm counting on your misplaced sympathy to sustain me through this slightly uncomfortable time. You can make a difference. So light a candle, say a prayer, write a ballad, gnash your teeth, or rend your garments for poor, poor, day shift Joolie.

Paste eater

Tomorrow I have to be at work at 9:30 in the morning again. All my 8 a.m. friends are making fun of me, but except for one lonely week in June, I've been on the night shift since December. Try as I might to trick, cajole, or force my body to go to bed earlier, whenever left to my own devices, my bedtime always ends up between four and six in the morning. It's always been this way.

As members of a society, we're always having to tell our bodies to go to hell. No, body, you may not stay up to watch the sun rise.  No, body, you may not have sex in the grocery store parking lot. No, body, you may not rip a triumphant fart during a wedding. No, body. No, no, no!

And if you're healthy and lucky, your body simply obeys, at least most of the time.

I realize this sort of repression is necessary in order to make things nicer for everyone, and to that end I wholeheartedly support it in myself and others. Still, sometimes I think it's a little sad.

Mystery

Ewww. Guess what this is? 

Julio

I have a new cactus. Its name is Julio Iglesias. John and Tina brought it up from Laredo, and Tina painted the pot. It currently graces my new dresser and lends a certain flair to the place. I think my room needed some vegetation, and Julio is just the thing.

 

What the hell is going on down there?

This is wrenching. This is fucking shameful.

Also, this is the least of anyone's worries, but if I hear one more politician (such as presidents Bush, Clinton, and Bush) say this scenario was unforseeable, I'm going to cave in my own skull and turn my head inside out. Oh, I'd say it was definitely forseeable. In fact it was forseen, as recently as the day before the flooding.

Not that pointing that out changes a damn thing now.

Oh, and hey, this smaller-government thing works just great, doesn't it? Like a fucking charm, it does.

Fuck.

Winter wonderland update

The ice broke in half when it fell, so I didn't get the coveted fully intact chunk today. It's still pretty satisfying to pry that much ice off the top of the freezer at once. THUNK!

The finished product. Some people use a hairdryer, but I'm always afraid I'll get electrocuted. So my freezer-defrosting technique involves many pots of boiling water and a hammer. Place the boiling pots inside and keep switching them out until the ice is compromised enough to bash it out with a hammer. Don't puncture the coils! (The dents in back are from previous tenants, I believe.) 

Be sure to throw the ice chunks on the lawn when you're done. The lawn gets a little drink, and it's fun to watch them smash into little pieces.

Finally, if you have a frost-free freezer, be grateful. (Or if you have anything at all! Every time I use or do anything, even drink a glass of water, I think about all the people wandering around the gulf coast right now and am sick all over again. Christ. More on that later.)

I did some other stuff today, but none of it was as photo-worthy as my freezer.

My boys are all growed up

Wain recently had a birthday, too, so now he and Roo and Eric are all pretty much in their mid-30s. Damn.

I started hanging out with Wain and Roone when I was 19 and they were 22, and at the time they seemed so old and knowing and able to buy me beer. I probably flirted with them a little too much at the time to be able to say they were like older brothers, but they were definitely influential.

At the time, Wain lived in a little house with two other friends, Ben and Billy. Roone and I and a few other people were always over there, drinking beer, watching movies, arguing about records, baking cakes, fixing bikes, or just getting in the way. It was that kind of house.

I loved it. I was just starting the whole work/pay rent thing and was a little uncertain about my ability to do so sucessfully, but they made being an adult seem all new and fun, like it was no big deal. And it was fun. And usually it still is, and a lot of that is because of those guys.

That's all.