Oh, my stars and garters!

Superlatives

There is nothing remotely five-star about this dry cleaners (which is no longer even called Five Star Cleaners) or the shopping center around it (which also hosts a lunch counter, a laundromat, a auto-repair shop that never seems to be open, and an Alcoholics Anonymous chapter). Still, I admire the optimism of the original owners and think the spangledy sign is kind of pretty around sunset.

I had a nice time riding my bike and taking pictures around the neighborhood tonight. I'll post more later, but now I have to go to bed because I am going to Dallas tomorrow for my cousin's bar mitzvah. I don't know a lot about the Jewish faith, but I do know that its adherents know how to throw a pretty good party. Have a good weekend and try to have as much fun as I plan to.

Garbage fairy revealed!

I just heard the trash can rolling down the driveway again tonight. I immediately leapt to the window and peeked out through the blinds...

No. Way.

We got a letter from The Landlady today. Enclosed was a check for every last penny of our security deposit, including the pet deposit.

Either she's not so bad after all, or using certified mail for the move-out notice and then hiring a cleaning company and making a big show of taking pictures of their handiwork actually did the trick.

I suppose it doesn't really matter. Anyway, we're not going to mull it over for too long because we have to go out for dinner now. Bye!

So much beauty in the mall parking lot I could hardly stand it

It was nice to be greeted with such splendor and the smell of rain upon exiting the seedy perfumey mall.

Just stuff

DWI Dude never wrote me back. Too busy getting drunken drivers out of jail time or something. Jerk.

I don't really think the internet is boring.* I do think it's a giant time and energy suck. I need a better default activity, I think.

I planted a rosemary plant and hung the hummingbird feeder today. Between those things, the full ashtray, and the coffee cups and magazines scattered all over the deck, it truly looks like my yard now.

School starts this week, which affects me not at all. I don't really know why, but I kind of have that bittersweet back-to-school feeling right now. Does that ever completely go away? 

Actually, to hell with that bittersweet nonsense: if you're an adult with vacation time, the month after Labor Day is always the best part of summer. All the kids are in school and adults have the run of the libraries and swimming holes. Yeah! Sit in your classrooms and stifle! Stifle and learn, you little suckers. I'm going to the lake!

I helped my friend Jennifer move her stuff into storage in preparation for her big Brooklyn adventure. It didn't take very long. I always admire a pared-down aesthetic in a person, but never so much as when I'm helping someone move.

The season finale of Big Love was a little disappointing. I really enjoy watching that show, but I'm not sure how much I like it. Taken scene by scene it's great, but the writing's a little unfocused sometimes.

I made migas this morning. They were delicious, but then I put crappy salsa on them and magically transformed all my nice food into a sweet, watery pile of yuck. Good salsa is too expensive, and the bad stuff is just fatal. There is one brand that is delicious and under $4, maybe even under $3, but they're always out of it. Take the hint and give Texas-Texas salsa more shelf space, HEB. And Topo Chico too, while you're at it. That shit is almost always sold out.

That's it! How'd the goat sacrifice turn out?

*Although I like to think I help it along in that direction a little. Take this post, for example. Snore! See?

The internet is boring

Go read a book or sacrifice a goat or something.

Sexy kitchen mop

Hey, I think she likes you!

I wanna talka my Lawyer Dude.

I'm just not sure I would want The DWI Dude (dot com) to act as my defense attorney in such an important matter.

I also don't know why the truck. To take defendants to court en masse? To secretly deliver highly potent liquor to bars?

Anyway, it was nice to have something to read during a slow point in traffic today.

Update, 11:48 pm: Wow! His website says he's a "trained and certified Phlebotomist."  It also advises you to scrub your MySpace page if you have a DWI charge because the police will use it to gather evidence. Probably not a bad idea.

Also, the site has a link where you can ask questions, so I asked about the truck. I'm sure he's just using it for ad space, but I'll let you know if I get an answer.

Dive

I got a roll developed from my cheap-o waterproof camera. I liked this one the best.

Not a lot going on. Trying to make up for lost swimming and grilling time, doing lots of little boring tasks around the house, thinking I should plan a trip soon. Oh, yeah, and our wedding. I should probably get going on that, huh? 

Aitch Two Oh

We got a little band from Tropical Storm Erin this morning, and the rain barrel completely filled up within an hour. Now I have water for all my plants for the rest of the summer! We'll have to buy mosquito dunks to drop in the water so we don't get West Nile or dengue fever or what have you. Those tiger mosquitoes are real vicious bastards, and I believe they came all the way from Japan* just to bite the strip of skin between my shirt hem and my waistband.

*Several sites say they came in to Houston in a shipment of tires from Japan. I said Indonesia before, but I made that up.**

**Why, damn it? Why did I do that? Now I have no credibility! Believe not a word I say! I don't even have a stupid rain barrel! I just wanted you guys to think I was cool! Sob!***

***Sob!****

****Sniff.

Rest

After yesterday's exertion, our trip to the swimming hole today about finished me off. It was hard to climb the stairs to write this bullshit post, that's how tired I am. (Probably it wasn't even worth the effort, but here I am. Hi! How's it going? You look really nice. I mean, you always look nice, but you look particularly fetching today.)

Anyone have a secret swimming hole they want to give up? Waterfalls are preferred but optional.

Triathlon

I'm taking a four-day weekend because I can. And because I should. Case in point: today was great. I woke up and rode my bike around the neighborhood for about an hour. It was already 98 degrees at noon, cloudless, and windless, so there was nobody out. Even for a weekday, it was almost creepily quiet. That's okay; more road for me.

I wanted to check out the neighborhood branch library, so I rode over there. It turns out that's where everyone was. There were so many people in there that it felt claustrophobic, so I didn't stay long. I have never had that experience in a library before. It was kind of awesome.

Thassome guh shiht

I just cleaned some shoes with suede cleaner and now my lips are numb. That can't be good for you.

Exit

I had no idea the highway-sign font was called Highway Gothic. I never really thought about it at all, actually, which means it was probably a pretty successful font for conveying information.

Clearview, the new font that's gradually replacing it as new roads are built and old signs are replaced, looks  too something or other for my taste. The new toll roads around here use it and it looks strange to me: slick, calculatedly friendly, vaguely corporate, and ever-so-slightly wrong. I suppose you can't argue with increased readability when you're hurtling along at, uh, 70 miles per hour. In time that'll just be the way highway signs look, and the old ones will look quaint and give me that little shock of simultaneous strangeness and familiarity.

Deer, deer, what can the matter be?

My sister might have to spend the night with us because a deer died in the creek right next to her house and the smell is apparently unbearable. The city refuses to come get it unless my sister or her boyfriend drags it to the curb. At this point I think that would at least take a hazmat suit, a trailer hitch, and some chains. I find city services pretty responsive in general, but I have found their dead animal-collection policies to be less than stellar.

My sister and her boyfriend will probably opt to stay home, but I better go change my sheets just in case.

Update:  No slumber party for me; they did decide to stay.

Shaft

Huh. I don't see a Joolie Street in this picture. Surely that's an oversight?

I have spent at least an hour a day over the past week making sure I really for real got that last dose of cat pee out of the carpet. Late last night I declared it finally gone, pumped my mighty fist, and opened a victory beer. Then I went to the other side of the room to unplug the fan and caught a whiff of that funky, salty, unmistakable stench.

I sniffed the air, pulled back the other corner of the carpet, and goddamnsummamofobitchaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh, there was another stain: large, smelly, and very well set. So I must begin again, except this time I'm spending 59 cents on hydrogen peroxide instead of $18.

I like cats, but I think they would be much better pets if we just could glue their little urethras shut.

Swimmers!

Boaters! Sunbathers, hikers, bikers, and Schlitterbahners! All whose outdoor activities have been thwarted by thrice-daily downpours this summer, I say now you owe us your deepest gratitude!

Yea, for on this day we did install a rain barrel, thus ensuring it will never rain again.

For anyone who did not like the picture of the spider yesterday:

 

It's puppy-kitty-rainbow-sunshine happyland!

Grudge

Dan took pictures of the firefly-murdering spider. It's pretty dark in the backyard, so I didn't get a good look at it until he posted this photo. Murderer!

(Check out Dan's stop-motion cicada movie. It's really cool.)

 

This weekend I get a gold star for eating many grilled meats, swimming laps, and doing a million little tasks. I also got to meet two of the old ladies who live on my street. One wanted a piece of scotch tape so she could secure the plastic bag she had wrapped around the sun visor of her car. I have no idea why she would want to do that, but I am nothing if not neighborly, so I got it for her. The other just wanted to say hi, and so she did.

Both made a point of telling me how long they've lived here, 37 years and 43 years, respectively. I wonder if they have some competitiveness about that, if Mrs. 43 still secretly regards Mrs. 37 as that new gal down the block and Mrs. 37 goes around muttering about how Mrs. 43 only thinks she's cool; Mrs. 43 might have been here longer, but Mrs. 37 made this neighborhood what it is today, goddamn it! 

Anyway, they were both nice. Some friends of ours who live up the street also brought us a peach cobbler, so I feel all welcomed to the neighborhood and shit now.

Later Eric and I took a drive, one of those let's just keep driving on this country road until we (hopefully) end up somewhere we recognize kind of drives. It got darker and darker, and we got further and further away from the city lights, and then the smell of the air changed, and the temperature dropped noticeably, and we were just about to turn around when the little two-lane blacktop puked us out into downtown Manor and, from there, 290.

It's kind of exhilarating to be lost, as long as you have plenty of gas and it isn't for too long. 

Decision

I should get out more. But not too much more. I'm too cheap. And, as much as I like people (really!), big masses of them make me itch. So that's that.

All up in your compound eyes

My sister and I watched a large spider kill a firefly on my back deck tonight. As the spider wrapped the firefly up, it started blinking frantically. Blink blink blink blink. As the spider got it all squared away and prepared to finish it off, the firefly got tired but continued to blink sadly through the cocoon. Blink. Blink. Blink.            ...Blink. It was the most pathetic thing I've ever seen.

We couldn't watch anymore, so we went inside to make drinks. When we came out, there was nothing left but a little firefly-sized husk. Snf.

A few minutes later, another bug stumbled into the web. I think it was a click beetle. Whatever it was, it was the most tenacious little bastard I've ever seen. The spider went to wrap it up, but the beetle went crazy on it and put a serious hurting on the spider, battering it for several mintues until the spider was still. We thought it had died for sure, but it finally got its bearings and retreated.

The beetle was left alone, but it was still stuck to the web. After thrashing around for about five agonizing minutes, it finally freed itself, jumped down, and ran under the deck. My sister said it would have been the greatest ironic fun ever if I'd stepped on it as soon as it hit the ground, and she was totally right, it would have been, but I didn't have the heart.

When we went inside, the spider was running around, assessing the damage to its tattered web. The whole thing was better than pro wrestling if you ask me.