Oh, my stars and garters!

The AP should pick this up any minute.

Remember how there was that big to-do last week over the light news item that January 24 was determined to be the worst day of 2006? Well, according to my painstakingly crafted formula, which divides my personal level of boredom (very high) by the current amount of excitement in my day (extremely low), I have calculated that today is the most boring day ever in the whole world. 

Big sexy goes back to the dentist

Believe me, it felt even more disturbing than it looks. But it's done. My canals have been rooted. Or my roots have been canaled. Whatever.

P.S. This is my 1,000th post. Gee whiz!

Popsicles

I did another Flash animation tonight. It's based on a drawing I did on a post-it note at work a million years ago. I'm still learning my way around, but it's getting a lot easier. I hope I'll eventually be able to incorporate more features. Like sound. And blinking. Blinking would be cool. (I mean blinking as in eyes. Although blinking images would be cool too. Blinking images of blinking eyes might be blinking overkill, as well as kind of stupid, but I'm confident I could get that together too if need be. Anyway, you can watch it here. Just don't expect to see blinking, because there isn't any. That's all I'm saying.)

Lively

Yah yah yah

Not much going on, really, but I feel busy. I saw Brokeback Mountain tonight and liked it. I have to think about it some more. I'm going to see a play tomorrow night and I expect to like that too. I have jade to plant and calls to make and Choo's birthday to celebrate. I have outfits to buy for my cousin's bar mitzvah weekend; the state of my wardrobe, as always, is deplorable. Also cat hair to clean before Vickie gets here in a week and a half--she's allergic. It's a small price to pay to be able to hang out with her for a whole week. She lives too damn far away, in my opinion.

Work continues to be boring.

Let's quit!

Chowdah

It was chilly today and I haven't made chowder in forever, so I decided to make a pot. I'd seen a recipe in Wain's copy of Laurel's Kitchen, so I went with that.

Laurel's Kitchen, for the uninitiated, is a 70s-era vegetarian cookbook full of dreary, wholesome recipes, with a design scheme to match. Also, it introduces most every recipe with well-meaning but depressing little blurbs like Who would have guessed that four lima beans soaked in lukewarm water could produce such a hearty, nutritious feast? Garnish with parsley for a little something different!

Well, whatever. I knew this stuff isn't the kind of thing I usually like to cook--I'm not about to whip up a lentil loaf or incorporate millet into my diet as they suggest--but I figured one corn chowder recipe is just as good as any other. Lots of the other recipes sounded frankly awful to me, but surely, I thought, vegetarians know their soup.

Gold star

Tonight Wain took a pork loin, wrapped it in maple-smoked bacon, seared it, encased it in philo dough, and baked it to porky perfection. Then he did the dishes and made an apple crisp. Also, he used just the right blend of civility and menace to get the scary rambling magazine solicitor off our porch this evening. Wain's good to have around.

Boo! Eek!

It turns out that vicodin makes me extremely jumpy. Although that could also be the four cups of coffee I drank today to counteract its narcotic effects.

Come to think of it, why would I even want to do that? I'm clearly not myself today. If my face still hurts tomorrow, I'll try to finesse the coffee-to-vicodin ratio and let you know how that turns out.

Die, tooth, die.

Well, that pretty much sucked. At least the endodontist, a freckled Asian guy with a pleasant voice, was cute. I'm glad someone in there was. I felt extremely unadorable gagging and drooling against a rubber tooth dam while a bunch of gunk got scraped out of my molar.

The only fun part was checking out at the same time as a girl who'd been sedated. Boy, was she messed up. They asked her if she'd be wanting the sedation for her follow-up procedure and she said "Yeah!" so loudly and eagerly that even the frowny receptionist laughed. Good stuff, I guess.

Yippee!

It looks just fine to me.

So guess what? I'm probably going to get a root canal tomorrow! A terrifically expensive root canal! Oh, man, this is glorious! This reminds me of the best day of my life, which I can't even remember right now because my thinking is so clouded by my extreme euphoria! Oh, god, yes! Yes! YES!

Eh, whatever. I've had a root canal before, and after it was over I wasn't really sure why it's always flung around as the high-water mark of bad experiences. Sucks that my car got torched with me in it, but, hey, it's better than a root canal! I'd rather have a root canal than go to one more frigging church bazaar with my aunt this month, ha ha ha! Oh, man, I'd rather have a rusty lawnmower blade forced up my urethra than have to get a root canal! Etc., etc. What a bunch of horseshit.

The run-up to the root canal, now, that hurts. I woke up at four this morning from tooth pain and lay awake for over an hour, kicking my feet and making weird tiny noises while I waited for my overdose of ibuprofen to kick in.

When I got my last root canal, I was in so much pain I begged them to dispense with the petty niceties of drilling and reconstruction and just yank the fucker out, which, fortunately, they refused to do. And once they numbed it for the procedure, it wasn't so bad, no different than any other filling. And after they killed the root, capped it off, and sent me home with a prescription for painkillers that I didn't really need, I was ecstatic with relief and, well, being really high on Vicodin.

But the expense, that's what's really going to hurt. Not as bad as my stupid tooth did last night, but I had much more interesting plans for that money than dental work. Oh, well. I guess it beats a kick in the teeth, ha ha ha!

I make movie

It could do with some tweaking, and I think I tried to pack way too much crap into 26.2 seconds, but here it is! I think.

Download crying_cryer.swf

I lied

Hooray! I got the program to work. But boo! It's going to take forever to finish my Flash thing. Should've tried something simpler, but it's too late now. So instead, a really bad joke, transcribed verbatim from Eric:

So a woman gets a blind date with this guy, and they decide to go to the carnival. They walk around, ride some rides, eat some cotton candy, and then he says, "Well, what do you want to do next?" And then she says, "Get weighed."

And so they go to the guy at the carnival who guesses her weight, and he gets it wrong, and they get a prize. So then they ride another ride, and then he says, "Well, what do you want to do now?" She says, "Get weighed."

He kind of sighs, thinking, gaa, that's kind of weird, but whatever. So he takes her back to the guy at the carnival who guesses the weight, and he guesses the weight, but he's already seen her and he knows how much she weighs, so it's really not that fun. He gets it right on the nose, and they don't win a prize, and that was pretty much the end of their date.

Ok, dammit.

I'm not posting again until I have some Flash to put up. Or until something really amazing happens, whichever comes first.

Reanimated

I'm trying to teach myself Flash, a project I started a few years ago and abruptly abandoned because, well, it's kind of hard. Classes are really expensive, and anyway I'm stubborn about seeking help because I've been able to figure out most programs intuitively. I'm a little humbled because Flash is a lot different from Quark or Photoshop, what with that extra dimension to tangle with and all.

I went through a tutorial online tonight, though, and I was able to get a cute little car to drive across the screen past some trees and buildings. So there's hope. Maybe I'll have cartoons to put up soon, or maybe this is a complete, if fairly enjoyable, waste of time.

Rooroodio

Dan's funny.

Home state

Capitol gate, lunchtime.

I feel 9,000x better.

I skipped work today, but I'll go back tomorrow. Also, I'll be having Middle Eastern and Dr. Seuss for lunch.

Also, remember when Celis beer was good? And then it was gone? And then it was back, but it sucked? Well, Mister Celis is leaving Belgium to come back to Texas. God knows why anyone would want to do that, but I'm not going to argue. There will be Celis beer again, just under a different name.

The drunkest I've ever been on beer* was after a six-pack of Celis Grand Cru when I was 20. I was used to Busch! Nobody told me it was, like, 99 percent alcohol! But instead of the pukey aversion that typically follows that sort of experience, I have an affection for Celis. I mean, it's not the beer's fault I was a dumbass.

I hope it's as good as I remember it; my taste in a lot of things was not so great then.

*Drunkest, not sickest. Sickest was when I consumed a series of Miller High Lifes and a codeine tablet, chased with an accidental healthy swig from a can filled with cigarette butts, on the drive home from a Rangers' game. I woke up the next day, ate a kiwi fruit, drank an Alka-Seltzer, and left for the afternoon shift at 7-Eleven. I spent the bus ride to work slumped over with my head banging against the window, barely made it to the trash can, and spent the entire night plucking kiwi seeds out of my nose. To add insult to injury, by some demonic coincidence the guy who worked at the RaceTrac in Pflugerville, where we'd made a pit stop the previous night, came in, recognized me, and mocked me for having tried to exit the store by pushing repeatedly on a plate glass window. I don't remember if the Rangers won, but they fucking better have.

Now I see that I should not have asterisked this, as it turned out to be longer than the post itself, and I think that's really obnoxious. Also, I realize it's kind of tacky to brag about how wasted you used to get. But seriously, y'all, I was soooo wasted.

Ouchie

My face hurts. I have some sort of sinus inflammation. I've tried nasal sprays, ibuprofen, and a steroid shot (rar!). I even tried a neti pot--you know, the hippie contraption you use to pour water into one nostril until it flows out the other--in an attempt to shut my nose up with soothing saline solution.

Eric got one too and is a big fan. (I think this is a really sweet picture of him, in spite of, or maybe because of, the stream of water shooting out of his nose.) The neti pot is totally gross but really fun, and I'm breathing much better already.

Ok, that's great, but it did nothing for my primary problem, which is that it feels like someone shoved a can opener up my left nostril. It's bad. I was up for an hour today. I went back to bed and dozed until six p.m. I woke to see the last of the daylight drain away outside my bedroom window. Bye, gorgeous Sunday.

Jesus, being sick is boring. Talking about being sick is boring. Reading about being sick is boring. Pretend you never read this post. (What post?) Ah, that's the spirit.

Damn it, Eric, quit introducing me to silly addictive computer games!

This week it's Dinky Smash. You have to blow up clusters of tiny cartoon heads by dropping them into groups of three or more. Meanwhile, my life gets shorter every day.

41-38, um, bitches.

I'm not much of a sports fan, as I'm sure I've said before, but as I've also said before, watching UT football with Roo is a blast, and I do love a spectacle.

So I watched Texas win the national championship tonight. In my limited experience, it was a good game, nice and tense with the requisite nail-biter finish. More importantly, I watched Roone spend five hours twitching, pacing, hurling his shoes at the television, downing numerous beers plus 9 or 10 shots of Jägermeister, and jumping up and down and hugging his friend Joey.

Roone lives a few blocks from campus, and as soon as the game was over, the horn-honking on Guadalupe started and crescendoed to a constant, massive Doppler blare within minutes. We wandered down the street to take a few pictures and laugh at the celebratory traffic jam. It was pretty infectious, and Roo was positively delirious, saying, "You just don't understand how big this is," over and over. As traffic was backed up for miles and UT football games are the only thing I've ever known Roone to wake up before noon for, I have a pretty good idea.

Backed up traffic; all were honking; honk honk honky honk. Note the many, many pickup trucks.

I was all, like, woohoo! Honk honk.


We were all, like, woohoo! Honk honk honk honkhonk, honk honk.

It was pretty damn fun.

But! I have decided I would like watching sports in general a lot better if the announcers would just shut. the. fuck. up. They are so incredibly full of shit. They babble and blather and bloviate, clucking and opining on stuff that even I can tell they don't know the first thing about. They make these bold, sweeping statements every play, even though half the time they have to reverse their opinion in the very next sentence.

When a player is doing well, they say things like, "Fantastic play! I've never seen anything remotely like this in my entire life! You know, John, that's why they've been calling him the Anus Crusher all season. He gets the job done."

But as soon as that player screws up, even on the tiniest thing, they say, "It just goes to show he's been having trouble with that par-tic-u-lar play since this summer. Maybe the hype has made him cocky? You know, I hate to say this, but I can't help but wonder if he shouldn't shoot himself in the face on the 50-yard line and save everyone the heartache of watching him fumble the ball again."

But then, if that same player redeems himself somehow, maybe five minutes later, they change course again. "Outstanding! Like I've been saying all night, John, he's like a god amongst mortals! I'd gladly drink a carafe of this young man's room-temperature semen in one long swallow; I've never seen anything remotely like this in my entire life! Wow. Just--wow."

Then it's on to the insanely obscure time-filling stats:

"Not since 1952 has a second-ranked quarterback in the 195-to-280-pound range completed more than five passes in one and a half quarters on a Wednesday night in a year in which the sum of its digits equals a prime number." 

"The last time a Big 12 team won, the dewpoint was 47 degrees; tonight it's 51. I guess only time will tell what happens in this one."

"I haven't had sexual intercourse since 1997, but it's worth mentioning that that's the year another California team won the Rose Bowl. I don't like to pick favorites, John, but--heh heh--my fingers are crossed for USC tonight. Heh."

Seriously, you jackholes, shut up, and I'd watch. Maybe. Honk honk!

I think I'm just going to babble a bit; don't mind me.

The weather has been freakishly dry and warm. So dry that North Texas burst into flames. So dry that my eyes burn and I gave Eric a shock on his neck when I kissed it tonight.

The warm's nice, though. I left work early today because it felt like a sacrilege to be inside on an 85-degree day in January. Eric and I went to dinner and ran errands on our bikes for a few hours tonight. We aren't the most compatible bike riders; he's a racer and a darter and I just can't do that anymore. Before I had a car I rode everywhere and considered myself kind of a biking badass, so it's painful to admit I've become a big cautious chicken.

Still, it was fun, and I feel good-tired now. I miss the way I felt in my body when I rode all the time, kinetic and springy and graceful. I wish that were enough incentive to get me out on the bike more than a few times a month. Unfortunately, it's apparently more important to me that I sleep during the extra seven minutes it would take me to ride to work each morning. Pa-the-tic.

The possum's gone, so far as I can tell. Nary a scritch nor a thunk last night. All day I vacillated between wishing we'd beaten it to death with a rake for good measure and worrying about whether it found a safe place to sleep today. Poor horrible revolting homeless possum.

What else? I haven't washed my hair since Thursday. Our water pressure is for absolute shit right now, and the landlord's been out of town. Meanwhile, I just haven't been moved very often to stand under a lukewarm trickle for a half an hour waiting for the shampoo to ooze off my scalp and down my back. Fortunately, I usually look better if I skip a few days. In fact, my hair has looked fantastic until about six hours ago, when it started looking like I washed it with movie popcorn. So now I know: five days is the absolute maximum on the no hair washing.

Oh, and look! Eric took his first ride in a convertible this weekend, accessories and all!

We were trying for a sassy Thelma/Louise look, but my friend Jillian pointed out that he looked more like he was about to take his place in line for his weekly potato ration. If Soviet housewives wore Ray-Bans and had a tendency to clap excitedly over the prospect of a car ride, I'd have to agree.

Finally, this is how we dry our hands in our possum-free bathroom, courtesy of pinprick:

Can you read the top left one? 'Cause it says "fuckity shitbag." That and "shithole" were Christmas presents, and my heart swelled with pride as Eric and I opened them under the tree as my whole family looked on.

So that's what's been up with me. I think that's plenty, don't you?

Under siege

It turns out we have weevils in the pantry and--again--possums under the bathtub.

The weevils are merely gross, but the possums are horrifying. They've been coming home every morning around 5:30, thunking around and waking me up. I can hear their terrible little claws scritching against the wall. One of them even hissed through the pipes at Eric the other morning as he rhythmically pounded on the side of the bathtub with a baseball bat.

That didn't work, but today the possums have been encouraged to relocate through an extended campaign involving the blasting of hardcore, the strategic placement of cayenne pepper and a bowl of ammonia, and, finally, several boards nailed over the holes in the house's skirt. I hope this works.

The weevils will require much scrubbing, dumping, the purchase of airtight containers, and a scattering of bay leaves and peppercorns.

Blecch. I guess I should be grateful we don't have roaches or rats. Or pumas. Good lord. A puma infestation would truly suck.

Lost and found

Things left and/or lost at our house last night:

Two Pyrex dishes (one claimed)
Leather jacket (claimed)
Two cars (claimed)
Loose dog named Billy (claimed)
Lighter (assimilated)
Half-pack of Camel Lights (smoked)
Shopping cart (returned to Fiesta parking lot)
Gift bag full of notecards, peppermints, and chocolate
Blue beach towel

It was a pretty good party. Happy 2006, everyone!