Oh, my stars and garters!

The haircut may only be $7, but you will pay and pay.

I appreciate what Benny's is trying to do with this mural, but I don't know why they made the kid look so completely miserable.

Although I guess I would be pretty sad too if a man with a bland, evil smirk was so hell-bent on hacking my hair off to the very scalp that he was in imminent danger of cutting his fingers off in the process.

I'm sure their haircuts are perfectly fine, but if I'd had to go to Benny's as a child, I would have nightmares about it to this day. Nightmares, and hair down to my ankles.

Slide show

The rest of the West Texas photos are here. If I were a better blogger I'd do a trip report, but let's face it, I'm not a better blogger and I think those are kind of tedious anyway unless they're in real time, and what kind of jerk goes camping with a laptop anyway? I saw a few people checking their e-mail at the park's visitor centers, and while I understand the impulse and possibly even the necessity, I kind of wanted to smack them.

I do recommend driving out to West Texas sometime if you live anywhere near there. It's awfully pretty and easy to have fun there.

Also: This site performs a valuable service. As does this one. This site is not especially helpful, though.

We're back at stupid home now

Total silence is a rare and wonderful thing, as are ancient rocks, hot dogs wrapped in bacon, and lots of aimless and ridiculously scenic driving. When you get tired of that, swimming, clean sheets, and buffalo ribeye for dinner are pretty okay too.

We realized about midweek that we should have planned to stay at least a few days longer, but we felt better about it after seeing our friends today. I mean, there are hardly any stars and there's no one shoving perfectly cooked bison down our throats or anything, but it's really not so bad at home.

Pictures, with more to come later.

Bye forever!

Or at least until next week. We're off on our honeymoon to beautiful West Texas tomorrow, if we can ever get our butts in gear to get the truck packed. We must remember to bring a table this time, and of course I can't forget my Freshette.  There is nothing more romantic than pissing in the dirt through a tube, right, girls? Seriously, we leave in about 11 hours and I can't wait.

Neighborhood bar

Now we have one. Sort of. Not really. It's within easy biking distance, at least. The Carousel Lounge is also within biking distance, but I rarely go there unless someone I know is playing a show. Nomad is actually less my idea of a fun bar than the Carousel, but it has a nice, landscaped outdoor area, draft beer, foosball, and mixed drinks, which are all pluses, especially now that the Carousel's pinball machines seem to be perpetually broken. Plus, I don't really see the point of hanging out in a dive bar now that you can't smoke. Without smoke, there are no dive bars, as far as I'm concerned.

While I liked it and enjoyed delicious beers there, I have to say the decor and the clientele at Nomad were a little self-consciously Austin Cool for my taste. You know how there are people who love living in Austin and take their dogs everywhere, and then there are people who LOVE LIVING IN AUSTIN and TAKE THEIR DOGS EVERYWHERE? This place had a lot of the latter.

Anyway, it's at Cameron and Corona, and I wish it success; for all its lovely palms and cedar fences, it has a terrific view of the Conoco station next door, and I figure that will keep any self-respecting neighborhood bar from getting too big for its britches.

Bored at work means all up in your face!

Here comes the rhino!

Here comes the naked mole rat!

Here comes the Triceratops!

Here comes Jesus!

That was totally stupid! Yeah! Stupid stuff all up in your face!

REI-yi-yi

Eric and I went to REI this evening because we needed some slightly better sleeping bags than the clammy garbage bag-esque ones we took camping last time. I love poking around REI and looking at all the super-specific gear you can buy--teeny tiny stoves! campfire espresso cups!--but their fixation on their membership program creeps me out. The woman who was helping us spent more time talking about the benefits of a $20 membership than the benefits of the sleeping bags we wanted to buy.

Every time I've ever gone into an REI, every person we come in contact with is pushing those damn memberships. It's so great...join us...you get to go to the member sales...join us...you can return items without a receipt at any time for any reason...join us and our legion of hollow-eyed Gore-Tex-clad adventurers... Actually, the return policy is pretty kick-ass, but nothing is that amazing. Either they get great bonuses for signing people up, or there are mass floggings at closing time when they don't make quota.

You don't care about any of that, though, and you are right not to, because that's actually really boring. I feel kind of bad about this, but the truth is you just read the previous two paragraphs for no reason other than that I'm too lazy to delete it all and think of a better introduction for the next thing I'm going to write, which you might care about more:

While I was busy goofing off in the tent aisle, Eric saw Angelina Jolie in REI today with a kid and an assistant in tow. That's a pretty good celebrity sighting, if you ask me, even if you don't care about Angelina Jolie; Eric doesn't.

Still, it's an interesting thing to have happen, to look up from signing your credit card slip and see someone as famous as Angelina Jolie just standing there a few feet away. I wonder if they asked her to buy a membership too.

I said he should have asked if he could rub her stomach, "just for luck." He said no, he would never do something like that, because the polite thing to do would be to reach over and and start rubbing it and ask, "Is it Brad's? 'Cause that's sooo awesome! OW WHY ARE YOU HITTING ME?"

Not unless you think round is funny

Look, everyone! We bought a bag of Hill Country Fare brand Fun Shapes Potato Puffs!

Wow! How crazy! And fun! They're shaped just like...tater tots?

This is marketing genius: We will tell you what is fun: this is! See the pink and purple packaging? See the word "fun"? That's FUN, okay?

Because, really, nothing is as fun as something that's shaped exactly how it's always been shaped. Especially if that shape is a cylinder, and double especially if that cylinder is formed by a wad of store-brand shredded potatoes.

FUN.

If I get much smarter I'm going to be a danger to myself and others.

I lost a brand-new tube of Burt's Bees lip balm this week. No big deal, I thought, it'll turn up.

Sure enough, it did, in my freshly dried load of laundry. And not just any load, but my alpha load, which means all my essentials and favorites are spattered with grease spots. Like I wasn't slovenly enough.

On the bright side, my T-shirts, socks, and jeans are now pleasantly honey scented. I hope I don't get attacked by bees.

Surely this is the toy that will stir me from my torpor

I got the new camera, a Canon S5 IS, from Amazon today. Not only did they not condescendingly try to tell me about view holes, it was about fifty bucks cheaper than at the store (even less than that with the store credit I had), and the camera got here four days before the estimated delivery date. Not bad.

Look! I have macro. Hooray!

I am in love with this cactus right now. Perhaps I should have married it instead, but think of the scarring involved... Unfortunately, this shot looks a little blown-out and weird.

I can tell it's not the greatest camera in the world, and it looks like I'll have to mess around with it quite a bit to get the pictures I want out of it. That's okay. I like messing around with stuff. One more test shot:

This is my sister with what she calls her "psych!" expression, although I don't remember what she was trying to psych me out about. (I am aware that some people prefer to spell it "SIKE," because it's even dumber that way, but I just can't do it. I won't. You can't make me.)

The camera has some limitations, but it's really fast and fun to shoot with, and it's several steps up from my old one, which I had been getting really impatient with. It's a little bulkier than I'd like, too, but it's just barely small and light enough that I'll be able to take it with me everywhere.

I can't wait to take it out to Big Bend. Maybe I'll get to take pictures of bears. Ok, maybe not bears. But I'll try to get a javelina or two at least.    

Dear Salesguy,

You should not assume that a customer is clueless just because she is browsing in a large national electronics chain store and has a vagina.*

I mean, you weren't a jerk about it or anything. Actually, you were very nice and reasonably knowledgeable. I rather enjoyed our chat once you figured out I knew what I was talking about.

See, not only do I know the difference between AA and proprietary batteries and that a viewfinder is not called a "view hole" and what a flip screen is(!?!), I knew more about the camera I was looking at than you did.

I have dealt with the public before, so I know you spend a lot of time helping people who have no idea what they want--and a few who don't even know where they are--but maybe you could be just a hair more subtle when you try to suss out what a potential customer is after. You know?

Your friend who is kind of clueless but not about digital cameras,

Joolie

*I, in turn, probably shouldn't assume a young male employee of an electronics store was being (almost certainly unintentionally) sexist, but I can't imagine he goes around asking guys in their 30s if they know the difference between battery types, can you? And "view hole"? I'll show him a view hole...

It was the lentil soup, I'm sure of it.

Eating too much Indian food makes me sleepy. And gassy. Taj Palace's buffet was so good I don't really mind, though. We were the only customers there when we went in, so it was silent and creepy and I was reluctant to talk because I am enough of an eavesdropper to know exactly how dumb people sound when you don't know them, and as a result I can't stand being overheard in public, even by a gregarious Indian restaurant owner who surely had better things to do than listen to Eric and me recount our respective days. Also, a deserted restaurant on dinner buffet night usually portends bad things. I was really afraid that they'd gone downhill since the last time we went there.

But I totally misread the vibe, because the food was fresh and spicy, and it turns out the empty room just meant we got first crack at everything, because the place was filling up rapidly by the time we left. The best part is you don't have to beg for naan; they load you up and keep it coming if you want it.

So that is my half-assed review of Taj Palace. Now, if you don't mind, I'm going to go fart myself to sleep.

Outdoorsish

Outside is good. I spent most of the weekend there. Riding my bike, drinking beer, and setting up a garden area were very fun, but the king daddy gold star out-of-doors experience this weekend was going to hang out at our friend's dad's farm this afternoon.

I saw cows, ducks, geese, chickens, lizards, dogs, hummingbirds, a coral snake, and a horse named Fancy. We came away with fresh eggs and succulent and cactus clippings and what I thought might be a mild case of poison ivy, but now I'm not so sure. I took lots of film pictures, which is fantastic except the part where you can't see them yet. I am tired and a little sunburned and very, very excited about going to bed.

I have a tale to tell.

Have a nice time, deer.