Oh, my stars and garters!

Oooh, ooh, witchy woman.

(God, I hate the Eagles.)

Well, la-di-da.

I don't have to go to work for the next 24 days. Actually, I just figured out that with Thanksgiving figured in, I'm only working five days in the entire month of November.

Remember when I was working all the time all spring and summer and I was all like, I must be an idiot,  this is so pointless, why am I doing this? Oh, right. This is why.

I'm uncharacteristically ahead of schedule for trip preparedness, too, so I can enjoy the first three days of my vacation while desultorily doing things like washing my socks and packing my toothbrush and checking my passport 3,056 times.

My sister the robot

The robot...

does the robot.

(Can you believe we spent two hours on this costume?)

Trip tics

We leave in a week. Milan, Florence, Cinque Terre, Siena, Rome, and London in 16 days. Oh, baby.

Now that all the travel arrangements and accommodations are out of the way, we can focus on the truly fun planning, like figuring out which bizarre museums to visit in Rome. We'll probably skip the Pasta Museum, the Museum of Police Cars, and the Permanent Exhibit of Period Carriages, but I think the National Museum of the Medical Arts and the Dario Argento museum will be worth a look.

Don't get me wrong, I'm stoked about stuff like the Uffizi and the Vatican for sure, but I think a little squick will be a delightful counterpoint to acres of lavish masterpieces. Balance is key. Cut the Botticelli with some babies in bottles. Everyone's happy.

Beep beep

After spending approximately nine million dollars for unsexy things like belts and brake pads, my dusty little car runs like a dream again. It sounds like one, too, and it's fun to drive again now that I don't wince every time I apply the brakes (wheeeeeet) or let it idle in neutral (gragragragragrrra). That's good, because we're taking that car to Florida over Thanksgiving, and I'd have spent every second on that scary swamp bridge convinced that at any second the whole thing was going to disintegrate into a pile of bolts and dry-rotted hoses, leaving us sitting on top of a pile of rubble with nothing but the unattached steering wheel in my hands and comically exaggerated looks of horror on our faces (whaamp whaaaaa).

Look who I got to hang out with last night:

Courtney Love. I keep telling her if she'd just brush her hair, wax her chest, and lay off the pills she'd feel so much better, but good luck trying to tell that girl anything.

Undead Hunter S. Thompson. You know, I'm not the groupie type, but I totally made out with him in the kitchen when no one was looking.

(Not pictured: Joey Ramone, ketchup and mustard, a whoopie cushion, a hot UPS guy, and a bunch of others.)

Yep. Dan and Chad had a Halloween party last night.  I didn't dress up, but I did slap on the sombrero because, hey, I like to wear my sombrero. It was a fun party. I laughed a lot.

Summary

"An ill wind doth blows," my friend Jo intoned earlier this week in this mock-weighty tone she likes to use for declarative sentences. Then we reconjugated for a while until we ended up with the more satisfactory past tense, "An ill wind done blowed."

It's been a weird week, filled with birthdays, accidents, death notices, and small triumphs. Not a bad week, exactly, just uneven and strange, and I feel a little melancholy and off balance as a result. It's Friday night, though, so I guess I'll put on some shoes and go out and leave the navel gazing for later.
 

Small drama

Eric and I were watching TV late last night when we heard a series of thuds. I thought it was probably raccoons in the trash, but the noise was loud and odd enough that Eric went out front to investigate. He ran back inside to call 911 when he saw the car upside down in the middle of the street.

The driver of the car was a little dazed and had a sore arm, but in the end she was able to walk away and climb into the ambulance unassisted. She said she'd glanced down to grab her cellphone, and next thing she knew she was upside down. It was her 17th birthday, poor very lucky girl.

Anyone got a good recipe for antelope?

Well, just so you know, we currently have a whole raw antelope leg in a white plastic trash bag taking up most of the top shelf of our fridge.

That fact is almost as creepy as the note I found on the counter when I got home today:

I'm just glad I knew about the antelope before I saw that note.

But lest you think I'm complaining, I'm not. Venison's good. Eric has some regular customers at the bar who hunt and like to share their spoils sometimes. So it's not uncommon for us to have tubes of camo-wrapped (how cute is that?) deer sausage sitting in the freezer. We like to eat it with eggs on the weekends sometimes.

This is our first limb, though, and we're not really sure what to do with it. Eric says it'll probably be easiest to hack it up and chicken fry it. That sounds delicious, although I think this antelope roast looks pretty damn tasty too. And, by a nice coincidence, the New York Times has an article on Hill Country venison today with accompanying recipes.

So I'll let you know how it goes. I think this is one of those things that has the potential to be really, really great or go horribly, horribly awry. It's a good thing Eric's in charge of this, is all I'm saying.

Hey, hurricanes!

Fuckin' we get it, okay?  Swirl swirl swirl, blow blow blow, flood flood flood, blah blah blah. It's just kind of played out by now, you know?

(Although: 882 millibars? Holeeeee shit.)

Pretty pretty Princess Choo

Bored at work

Ew Ew Ew Ew

I submit that having a long wet hair stuck between your toes first thing in the morning is the most disgusting feeling on earth.

Shoe post, for Colleen:

I got these for half the usual price, plus free shipping, on Friday. They are a much darker gray in person, but they aren't quite black. For some reason, I am all of a sudden thoroughly sick of buying black shoes. This surprised me when I first realized it a few months ago. I've always worn black shoes as a default, at least since I gave up the white Keds in middle school. Which weren't strictly white because I would draw and write on them with colored markers until they were a beautiful rainbow of insipidity.

Anyway, I'm hoping these will make sufficient walking shoes for our trip next month. I just need to hose them down with suede waterproofer and break them in until they're like slippers.

More shoes?

More shoes!

The best wedding receptions are open bar

But tomorrow: Shoes!

My parents are not douchebags

They bought my sister and me dinner tonight and took us to Eric's bar for a beer. They also read this frequently (hi, guys!) and therefore can appreciate how much it means to me that my family is douchebag free.

Okay, enough about douchebags, or the absence thereof. I don't want this to become, like, a thing. Tomorrow: Shoes, 'cause Colleen said so! I'm very accommodating.

On douchebags

I'm in a pretty good mood today, so I don't want to dwell on douchebags too terribly much. Still, let me say that they are truly a stain.

Last night I met my friends to see Pong play a patio party at some terrible bar on West Sixth Street, and then I went over to Emo's to see Gang of Four. Between those two events, I believe I have exceeded my douchebag quota for the decade.

I saw so very many douchebags out last night, you guys. It was Douche City. Everywhere I turned, there were douchebags. Douchebags milling about, douchebags jostling and braying and being overly hearty, condescending, and self-congratulatory. It was overwhelming.

I am determined not to let the douchebags of the world spoil my good time, and I can usually achieve this by ignoring or avoiding them. Unfortunately, big rock shows and faux-classy bars are pure douchebait. And because douchebags are so unselfconsciously douchey, it's impossible to completely ignore them because they loudly spew the fine mist of their douche essence all over anyone within earshot. And douche mist doesn't just slide off. It works its way into your pores and it festers until you are irritable and uncomfortable and you start to feel bitter and self-righteous, rolling your eyes and making shitty little cracks to your friends. You may then begin to worry that you're a bit of a douchebag yourself, and a hypocrite to boot. After all, who are you to criticize?

But you shouldn't do that to yourself. No. They started it, and you are right to mock and despise them.

If you're not a douchebag, I'd like to thank you. The relative taste, restraint, and manners you exhibit make this world a better place. And, because of people like you, I had a great time last night, douchebags be damned.

Music post update

For bmarkey:

The Bob Mould album is all right. I'm not crazy about the club beats and the Cher-style vocal distortion on a few of the songs, but the songs are good and I think it'll grow on me.

Gang of Four was excellent. They were energetic and slightly chaotic and a lot looser than I expected. Guitars were hurled. Baseball bats were swung. All performance, but it was just intense enough to throw the audience a little off balance: are they really angry? Is he going to snap and hurl that baseball bat into someone's face? I liked it very much.

Tomorrow: Douchebags!

A music post because I never write those

Here is my music post:

I just peeled the annoying security stickers off and am about to put in the latest Bob Mould, which I know almost nothing about and would not have bought if I had not read or heard somewhere that he'd abandoned his recent drum machine experiment. We'll see how that goes. I like Bob Mould a lot (Although Black Sheets of Rain is so depressing it's almost parody unless you actually are depressed, and I've never been able to walk down the parking ramp to work on gray, muggy days without hearing a mocking chorus of Over and over and clouds hanging over, choking the life out of me; the promise seems to be: We work in order to be freeeee. Um, Bob? Shut up, okay? Thanks.).  I also like Hüsker Dü, and Sugar's Beaster has been my favorite drawing music for about 11 years, so I have tempered but high hopes for this one.

Also, I am going to see Gang of Four tomorrow with Eric and Dan. I have high hopes for this too. I first heard Gang of Four in eighth grade at the height of my INXS obsession. It was the only time I was ever a completist about anything, so I had to get the Dogs in Space soundtrack, which featured Michael Hutchence. I never saw or bought the actual movie, though, so I guess I am a pretty crappy completist. I guess I've always been pretty half-assed in all my endeavors, even my breathless junior high crushes. Anyway, the soundtrack had a Gang of Four song, Anthrax, on it, which I liked at the time but in a totally context-free way as far as Gang of Four or anything else music-related went. Many years later, Eric and Katherine played Entertainment a lot on Sunday mornings when they lived together, and it sounded really good with coffee and magazines and not much immediately to do all day, but maybe later, and even later than that, Eric told me he had been listening to the Anthrax song obsessively when we first started dating but assured me the lyrics nothing to do with his feelings about our burgeoning relationship. So I hope I like them too.

Okay, everyone! That was my music post. I hope you enjoyed it, and I hope it will clear up any questions you might have as to why I rarely write music posts. Thank you for your time and attention.

There is a three-year-old playing the ukulele in the office two doors down.

Swear to god, and it doesn't sound as bad as you might think. At least it's not a trombone.

It was a real pretty weekend

I rode my bike, took a walk, ate barbecue at a picnic table. I went to the mall with my sister. I hate the mall, but with her it's almost fun. I love how, in context, spending $90 on a see-through dry-clean-only blouse seems almost reasonable when you're at the mall. I did not fall for the mall's devious marketing techniques today, although I may go back next week when they do the free gift at Clinique. I'm not a sucker because I need lipstick anyway.

The highlight of the weekend was probably watching Roone geek out on the UT game. Roone is much more interesting than the game itself.  I hope I don't make him self conscious and spoil everything by writing this, but if you think you hate watching football, you should reserve judgment until you watch it with Roone. He yelps, sneers, paces, mutters darkly, obsessively refreshes the fan message boards, screams obscenities, and chainsmokes when the Longhorns aren't doing well. He leaps, bounces, spins, hoots, and stirs the chili when they are. UT finally won their annual dick-measuring contest with OU yesterday, so Roone was happy, even more so after he made Eric and me watch the same touchdown seven or eight times on his VCR, chortling with real pleasure each time.

In other news, I have the murky foundation for a sinus headache right now. I also really wish people would quit dying in huge disasters.

I'm having a pretty fun day

Holy crap, it's cold and rainy. Sweater weather. Smoking weather. Walk to work weather. Afternoon coffee weather. Meet your friends for Indian food weather. Sit at your desk afterward and contentedly belch korma weather. Write a self-satisfied blog post weather. Exciting weather, is what it is.

Food

I had macaroni pizza for lunch today. Niki (of Niki's Pizza and Pasta in Dobie Mall) was experimenting, he said, and he came up with what's your basic New-York style pizza, but with extra cheese securing a layer of ziti.

I can't decide if I really liked it or not; that might be a little too much of the grain family for one slice. Still, it had a nice element of chewy goodness to it, and it was certainly filling. It's all I've had to eat all day, and I'm still not hungry.

Anyway, I like Niki's. They're nice guys, and they always give me extra-big wedges of pizza ("to fatten you up"). This makes Bill, my occasional lunch companion, twitch with envy as he compares my glorious monster slices with his merely generous ones. That's worth the price of admission right there.

A-minus

Whoo

Topo Chico mineral water. It's fizzy, kinda peppery, and the slim glass bottles are the perfect size and heft for my hand. Also it's great with a little vodka and lime, pomegranate, and pineapple-orange juices.

The intense-looking girl down the street who's always sitting on her porch, tapping away and squinting at her laptop through horn-rimmed glasses when I drive home from work. Hey, whatchew writin' for? She makes me happy.

The impending cold front. I was going to make tortilla soup tomorrow in honor, but Roone took the massive soup tureen with him. I'll make a big sticky tuna casserole instead and top it with big bags of shredded cheese and salt-and-vinegar chips. This is one of my favorite dishes, but the mere thought of eating it in 100-degree heat makes my throat slam shut and my stomach roil. So tomorrow's my big chance.

The ridiculous dream I had this morning. I was trying to navigate this weird, run-down strip mall, and I pushed through a door to find The Clash playing to a tiny audience. As soon as they saw me they stopped playing, shook their heads angrily, and said "nuh-uh-uhhh" to me in time with the song they'd been playing. I tried to protest that I hadn't meant to sneak in, but they weren't having any of it. Angry and humiliated, I left and called The Clash's customer service line to register a complaint, right before I woke up laughing.

Boo

No Stars season opener in my television market. I mean, who cares, really? There will be a million more chances to watch hockey this year. But I was curious about the new game rules, and it's kind of galling that I have a channel entirely devoted to horse-racing results from around the country but can't watch an NHL game that's only 200 miles away. I guess I could watch the stupid New York game instead. Or find something productive to do. Or shut up, since that's the only thing I can really think of to complain about right now (aside from the usual hell-in-a-handbasket stuff that's always pissing me off like a low-grade fever but that I usually don't write about because once I started, every single post would simply be a flailing tangle of incoherent obscenities, and who wants to read that?)

Lust shoe twit

I didn't know you could design your own Converse until Dan told me about it last weekend. What a great idea.

I wish I could show you my ideal pair, but the site is Flash-based. So just picture the most beautiful shoe in the world, which is a shoe with flames, leopard spots, zebra stripes, green stitching, blue laces, a red racing stripe, and the word "Twatface" printed on the side in a purple Arial font, and you'll pretty much get the idea.

Sixty bucks isn't bad for all that; I might actually have to order a pair.

Update: Here they are! (Duh, I always forget about the "Print Screen" option.)

Stupid joke 'cause I'm bored

Q: Why don't you hear many jokes about Jonestown these days?

A: The punch lines are too long.

Chuff-chuff-chuff!

Poky poky

Tomorrow I get a haircut, my first in nearly four months. I've been letting it grow as long as I could before I snapped (and my ends split), so I'm convinced it'll look really nice once it's trimmed and tamed a little.

I've been trying to put off making unnecessary purchases as long as possible in an attempt to save money. It's a great strategy, but I've run into a pretty serious snag now that everything is wearing out all at once. My car sounds downright disgruntled right now, I'm down to two and a half wearable pairs of pants, I have to moosh my lipstick against my mouth and sort of dab it around to get any sort of coverage, and my sneakers range from grubby to disgraceful.

Maybe I'll wait until we go to Italy to replace most of that stuff. Then it won't just be shit I gotta replace, it'll be souvenirs. Souvenirs that'll be ripped-up junk in a year, but still.

Which, by the way, hey! We'll be in Italy in four weeks. That makes me exceedingly happy. I suppose at some point extremely soon we should narrow our trip down to the towns we want to visit, book our flight from London, find hotels, buy maps, all that good stuff.

I understand why I'd want to put off buying pants and getting my car tuned up, but why do I procrastinate even when it comes to the stuff I'm super excited about?

Don't answer that, not even silently to yourself.

No mo' photo show

Before

After

(I think we look like a failed dance troupe in the second photo; our interpretive body-motion performance, "Trembling With Joy/Quaking With Stupid," is in the works as I type.)

Anyway, there are a few more on flickr.