Oh, my stars and garters!

Maintenance update

There is some poor son of a bitch out front randomly digging up our yard in search of the leaky pipe.  Which, fortunately, turned out to be freshwater rather than the effluviescent* alternative, but the fortune pretty much stops there.

I suspect this guy is just some dude hired as day labor, and I'm also willing to bet whoever eventually replaces the pipes will know as much about plumbing as I do about about jet maintenance.

The first guy the landlady sent out couldn't do it because the water and muck on the front steps have attracted bees, and he's deathly allergic to bees, so one sting--just one sting!--and we'd have to drive him to the hospital. He practically ran away from our house and the bees, poor guy. The new guy who came out yesterday kept asking Eric where the leak was until Eric snapped that he had no idea, seeing how he was not a plumber and all. It's too bad Eric's not a plumber, really, because that makes probably zero plumbers involved in this circus. The world could probably use more plumbers in general. They're just nice to have around, I think.

I guess I should be grateful that anyone's doing anything at all. This recent activity comes after two months of the landlady trying, in her stupid-savvy way, to insist that there was no leak, or if there was one, then there was nothing she could do about it, despite reports from the city, heartbreakingly enormous water bills, and overwhelming physical evidence to the contrary.

She has many tactics, this woman. She changes the subject, confuses the issue, lies to our faces. When finally cornered, she drags a bunch of ill-equipped people out to do the best they can.

This woman reminds us of someone, but we can't quite put our fingers on it. We think she is a bad person. We wish she would be devoured by rabid javelinas.

*New word, do you like it?

I just wanted a Pepsi

I was making some Annie's macaroni and cheese--you know, the organic brand with the fuzzy little bunny as a mascot. You're supposed to open the box by pressing on the picture of the fuzzy little bunny tail that's printed on the little perforated tab on the side. But the perforation was cut badly, and it wouldn't open despite repeated impatient jabs. (I should mention here that I was hungry to the point of profound irritability--what my friend Katherine calls "hangry.") I tried using my thumbnail, which promptly broke in two. So then I set the box on its side, took out a steak knife, and cut that stupid, placid son-of-a-bitch bunny's ass to shreds.

After the pasta was freed and boiled, I pulled the powdered cheese packet out of the box, and of course that had also been slashed to ribbons in my stabfest. Powdered cheese went everywhere. Counter, floor, sink, stove, pants. I mean, that stuff is practically aerosolized. I had to wipe up a whole mess of powdered cheese before I could eat my food, and the floor is still gritty.

I felt really stupid about that. After I thought about it for a while, I felt really stupid about the entire meal. Because how can food be organic and come in powdered form? Why am I paying more than a dollar for a box of macaroni and cheese anyway? Am I really that much of a sucker? It's not even any tastier than the regular kind, just a lot less orange. Come to think of it, why am I even eating mac and cheese in the first place, at least while I'm sober?

I don't know. I'm willing to concede I might have an anger problem, but seriously, sometimes little shit like that just drives me crazy. That bunny was totally asking for it.

Neat trick

My favorite recent discovery is that, if you are stopped first at a red light next to someone who is paying absolutely no attention to what's going on, and you pull forward a few inches to give the car behind you some room, odds are decent that the person next to you will sense your movement in their peripheral vision, assume the light is green, and start to go before they realize their mistake and slam on the brakes. The look on their faces when this happens is priceless.

I would never do this on purpose--with my luck they'd keep going through the intersection and take out a daycare van or something--but it sure is funny when it happens by accident.

Commute

I was riding my bike home from work today. I turned a corner, and hey! there was Howard Dean at Scholz Garten. I stopped and tried to hear what he was saying, but traffic noise and standing behind the speakers made that impossible. So I just snapped a picture and rode on.

A few seconds later, I saw hundreds of kids in fearsomely well-pressed suits massed in front of the Erwin Center. I wondered briefly if they weren't an army of Young Republicans gathering to march over and smite the ragtag band of Democrats a block away, but then I saw on the marquee that it was some sort of job fair for engineering students. Presumably they all got jobs that paid a lot and guaranteed lifelong success and went away happy. I don't know what happened to the Democrats.

I have pictures

They are of West Texas. They are not of stars because those didn't come out. Apparently I don't know how to take pictures of stars.

Anyway, we had a really nice time and I can wholeheartedly recommend a stay at Balmorhea State Park, where they have a gigantic natural-spring pool with fish and turtles and a high dive, and I can also tell you that Indian Lodge is beautiful and surprisingly schmancy for a state park. There were mountains all around and the rooms there smelled really good.

Marfa was a little strange in that there were all these hipsters there, and they seemed slightly annoyed that there were so many other hipsters there. The tour guide at Chinati told us that rents out there are on par with Austin. This in a town so small that people keep goats tethered in front of houses that are patched together with corrugated tin and old tires, and the streets two blocks off the town square are unpaved, dusty and rutted. The world is weird.

Anyway, the set is here if you want to see them.

Why does everybody always bitch about Mondays?

This has been a glorious day. The weather is perfect. We had a high-school mariachi band and dancers performing outside our office building this morning.

A rusty trombone!

Today I learned that trombone is French for paper clip, and I thought that was pretty damn delightful. The new The Wire episode is up and waiting for me in the OnDemand queue. I love typing "queue" and also spelling it out loud. Try it and you'll see. Also, Eric picked up his new bookcase and our custom-built art cabinet today, and I can't wait to see it and eventually put art supplies and shit in it. These are all good things to be faced with on the first day back after vacation.  On the whole, I'm pleased.

Things I have learned this weekend:

• Shiner Light tastes better than Shiner Bock. This discovery has destroyed many long-cherished theories of mine.
• Schlitterbahn Galveston Island is not as nice as Schlitterbahn New Braunfels.
• I still enjoy a good free fall every now and again.
• But I can tell I'm getting older, or possibly more paranoid, because while I still enjoy waterparks, the crowded lukewarm wavepool now looks more like a potential meningitis outbreak than a real good time. 
• People in Houston don't look very happy. They aren't unfriendly, exactly, but they look closed off and kind of hard. I continue to be fascinated and perplexed by Houston. Dallas too, for that matter, because I grew up so close to it but still feel like I don't really have a handle on it. I don't know enough about San Antonio to be fascinated or perplexed by it, but it does intrigue me. I've been thinking a lot about Texas this week, probably because I've seen an awful lot of it in the past seven days.
• Taking five months off does not improve one's photography skills one bit. I will only pick the best ones to scan, though, so hopefully no one will notice. I know you won't tell anyone.
• Bullet points are asinine.
• Yes,
• they
• are.

Splendidity

Our West Texas trip was damn near idyllic. We swam every day, and I have never seen so many stars in my life. Also, the new 80 mph speed limit on I-10 rules. Photos in a few days--I shot mainly film this time.

For now, here is an incomplete list of all the animals we saw:

Turtles
Pupfish
Giant catfish
Foxes
Snakes
Bats
Swallows
Frog
Giant ants
Javelinas (one dead, many alive)
An owl (Eric saw it and was amazed)
Prairie dogs
Skunk
Deer
Tarantula (dead at bottom of hotel pool)
Scorpion (ibid; also we saw a dead spider and a swastika scratched into the bottom; we didn't stay long after that for fear it was some sort of giant bad-luck baptismal font)
Fat fuckin' squirrel
Jackrabbit
Donkey
Millipede (dead)
Lizards
Ticks
Hawks
Vultures
Bighorn sheep
Raccoons
No bears, alas.

Run away!

I am ready to get the hell out of here. See you later in the week, unless of course we just keep going and never come back.

Cold snot on a paper plate

I have one of those stupid colds where I feel too crappy to really do anything but not so crappy that I feel I shouldn't be, so I keep trying to do things and then getting dizzy and sitting down and staring at the TV while nursing a whiskey and soda for two or three hours at a stretch before I feel guilty and try to do something again. As a result, I am very stupid today. So instead of babbling on and proving that to you, here are some pictures of some pretty things I saw this week:

Purple martin house. I've posted pictures of these before, but did you know there's a whole purple martin sanctuary behind Flipnotics Coffee Shop?

I think the martins are somewhere else on their little migratory pattern right now. All the house openings were blocked with clothespins to keep other, shittier birds out, but birds or no, I think it's cool that someone devoted this much prime real estate to birdhouses.

Orchids in the front office at work. They're blooming now and block the view of the flammable materials storage shed quite nicely.

Storm's a-comin'! Just in time to soak everyone at happy hour.

God, even this much activity is making me dizzy. I'm going to bed.

Stomach strata

 

I guess I was hungry.

Oblivious

Blatant

I had a good weekend. It was very good weekend-y. Sleeping in, coffee, dinner and a movie with Eric, TV on the sofa, swimming, grocery shopping, a party, and blah blah, blah, we get it.

You're a good weekend, ok? You don't have to hit us over the head with it. Do you have to be so typical and obvious? I mean, really, it's not that you weren't welcome, but you have to admit the dinner-and-a-movie date thing was a bit over the top.

Shh. Be cool.

I had what I thought was this hilarious idea that everyone should drink a six-pack and then redesign their blogs, and I started to do mine but then the whole idea seemed really stupid and meme-y. To be perfectly honest, memes make me really uncomfortable. I kind of hate them.

The other wrinkle in my big stupid plan is that I only had three beers, not six, so the six-pack aspect would have been a complete and total lie, and anyway my contribution was just going to be to change the banner design and then make the fonts really big and turn the whole background orange. While that cracked me up for a second after I did it, it really wasn't that impressive or even that awful, just really big and orange, and what the hell? Like big and orange is so fucking funny?

No.

So I changed it all back, except for the banner, and that's only because I don't feel like looking for the old one in my file manager thingy.

Now, dammit, I realize if I'd just looked for the old banner for a few seconds I could have quietly restored everything to the way it was and gone on with my evening without telling you all about this, blah blah blah, and that would have been that. Although maybe it's time for a new banner anyway. I mean, a new new one; the one up there now is not going to be it.

The best part is that I stayed home on purpose tonight hoping to get some stuff done, but obviously that didn't work out like I'd hoped.

Wow, this is an amazingly dumb post. I should stop it soon.

Anyhow, if you do happen to drink a six pack and redesign your blog, I wish you'd send me the link. I'll try to think of something nice to send you if you do, especially if it's even a little bit funnier than my stupid big and orange idea.

Taunt

I don't imagine they get a lot of use out of this.

I can't believe nobody liked my awesome joke.

I'll try again:

Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says, "Does this food taste funny to you?"

My repertoire of cannibal jokes is hereby exhausted. Thank you, good night.

Best joke ever

Did you hear the one about the cannibal who passed his friend in the street?

Death to slumlords!

That's all, really. I'm full of food and going to bed. I'd like to wake up in time to ride my bike, or at the very least not have to slink quietly into the office, which is really hard to do when you're huffing and puffing after running from the car and up the stairs.

Had ourselves a time

Eric, Dan, and I went to see Scratch Acid last night. I can't remember the last time I was so entertained during an evening out. Right off the bat, we encountered a girl with her skirt tucked into her panties on the way to Emo's. (I decided to be nice and quietly let her know when we caught up with her at the crosswalk, but the damage was already done.)

Once we got in place for the show, I got to eavesdrop on one of the dumbest conversations I have ever heard in my life. According to these guys, Gorch Fock : trombone :: Jethro Tull : flute; also, the serial killers and mass murderers depicted in the mural outside are "revolutionaries in their own right." They were drunk and trying very hard to sound intelligent. They were so fantastic they made my stomach hurt. 

The show itself was great too. David Yow was completely charming, and the crowd-watching was splendid. Sweaty people, happy people, drooling people, douchebags, meatheads, and a girl who took her shirt off in the heat and spent the rest of the show in her little red bra. (The guy she was with looked so surprised and delighted when she did it that it was kind of touching.) And I got to see Eric drunk, soaked, jovial, and full of testosterone after spending the show fighting to keep his front-row spot.

The evening was rounded out nicely when we were walking back to the car and saw a guy cheerfully urinating on the fender of a truck while yelling, "Where's a cop when you need one?" 

If I thought it would always be that much fun, I'd go out every night.

Stripped

I discovered tonight that the same person who stole my bike light most likely also stole my valve caps.

I bought them at Fiesta for $3 to adorn the crappy old Honda Civic that I bought from Roo for $400 in 1999. I had to push start it, simultaneously keep my foot on the gas and the brake when it was stopped so it wouldn't stall, and hold the windshield wiper switch up manually so the wipers wouldn't run all the time. The valve caps made me feel a tiny bit better about all this.

Eventually my parents bought me a good car and Eric bought me a good bike, and I happily transferred the caps to the bike just for that extra touch of coolness.

I don't want to get carried away with overwrought nostalgia and not-very-hard luck stories here, but I'd just like to point out that whoever stole my bike light and my seven-year-old, three-dollar valve caps is a pathetic piece of shit.

Front row seat

Our hippie neighbors across the street are moving out, and it's even more of a circus than when we moved. Cars pull up, get mattresses precariously strapped to their roofs, and pull away slowly, hazards flashing. Groupings of furniture appear and disappear. People keep showing up, tripping, dropping things, flinging full garbage bags into back seats.

Tonight two of them got into a fight while I was smoking on the porch. The girl's voice was high and panicked and just kept getting higher and more panicked until she was basically emitting a series of strangled squeaks.

"I can't do it like this! I'll have to unload the van by myself and then there's all this other stuff I have to come back and get and I don't just want to drag it around with me and I don't see why I have to neeneeneeneeneeneenee!"

Then the dude, exasperated and feckless. "LOOK. All you have left is this stupid chair shit--I don't know what the fuck--the chair covers. And this black curtain rod. THAT'S IT. And I don't see why I should blah blah blah blah blah."

"Neeneeneenee!"

"Blah blah blah blah!"

Finally, they came to some sort of agreement and climbed into their rented van. Then they drove away, but not before they came about an inch from taking out another neighbor's open car door.

I wanted to laugh, but then I realized there's an excellent chance that just one month ago Eric and I had a few exchanges that sounded a lot like that one. So I decided to feel sympathetic instead, for moving truly sucks. I can't tell you how glad I am that August is finally over.