Oh, my stars and garters!

Still no name for the cat

Lumpy? Loafy? Sugarwhiskers? Hitler?

Cadillac

It's two years younger than I am, and it's supposedly never been ridden until now. Our nice friends/neighbors gave this to us as a wedding present and I'm looking forward to many trips on it to the library, bar, and pool. My BMX cruiser is fun to ride and makes me feel like little bit of a badass, but it's also great to glide around on a fast, sturdy cute-girl bike. I just need a bell and a basket and I'm all set. 

New Cat still has no name, although he has graduated to hanging out on the coffee table half the time. The rest of the time he's eating, shitting, or hiding. Also, he is terrified of Eric, which is sad because his adoption was ostensibly a present for Eric's birthday tomorrow. Eric is usually like the patron saint of small, terrified creatures, so I'm guessing the new guy just isn't used to having men around. Happy birthday anyway, scary Eric!

New cat maybe not so bright

After we got him home he ventured out from the carrier and immediately managed to get stuck in the railing overlooking the lower flight of stairs. We had to pull him free. It  was sad, scary, and very, very funny.

He's had much better luck hiding under the dresser. He seems a lot more comfortable there, at least.

He's going to be huge. He's only ten months old and already he's bigger than Stinky. Despite his size, he's still pretty much just a baby, gangly and frightened.

Names suggested and discarded so far: Nathan, Jr.; Barney Frank; Harvey Kronberg; Heidi (get it? 'cause he's hiding!); Stanky; Dr. Terror; Mr. Whiskers. I think we should hang out with him a little more before we settle on something.

New buddy

We're taking him home on Monday, and the first order of business will be to change that asinine name.

It's true we were predisposed to like him because he looks so much like Stinky, so we tried to keep an open mind toward the other cats. But he was really cool and affectionate without trying too hard, unlike some of the others. Sorry, overachiever cats. You're awfully charming, but you just wouldn't fit in at our lazy, socially awkward household.

Despite what's-his-name's immediately apparent awesomeness, it's really hard to pick a cat and be done with it when you're in a room full of them. This guy and this guy were pretty great, and there was this really big, handsome, goofy badass of a cat that we would have loved to take home if we hadn't been afraid he would kick Stinky's ass every day just for fun.

Hey, I know! You should go up there and get one of those other ones we liked, and then we can come see him and live vicariously through you. I hear Town Lake has some pretty good cats right now, too.

Oh, come on. Don't you want a new cat? Don't you want to assuage our ridiculous, misplaced guilt for walking away from so many big-eyed, plaintive animals? The jerks.

Malaise at the monitor

I am very tired of seeing and hearing the limp, overused, unoriginal, and downright stupid phrase "pain at the pump" in news stories about gas prices.

Journalists of America, you can do better! And even if you can't, do you have to be so obvious about it?

So go to bed already!

Eric bought me a screech-owl house! I went hiking and swimming, ate a bacon cheeseburger, sat around in the backyard in my bathing suit, and rode bikes to the bar to drink beer with friends. Unless someone wants to offer me a unicorn ride between now and bedtime, I'd say this has been a pretty satisfactory birthday.

Eye see

Eye exams are scary, in that it's totally up to you and your subjective, undercaffeinated opinion what your prescription is going to be. Which looks better: One or two? Or three?

What if one is a little mushy, two is much sharper but slightly distorted, and three lets you read the bottom line of letters but at the cost of having weird jumpy halos around the edges? They all have their points, but which is actually better? I usually go with two.

Although it is cool when they shine the light in and you can see the blood vessels in your eyeballs. Also, dilation makes everything look a little fantastic, even though the light hurts, the curly plastic sunglasses they give you are humiliating, and your blown pupils make you look like the acid just kicked in.

The whole thing was pretty exhausting, and the hard part isn't even over: now I have to pick out new frames. I know you can switch them out pretty easily, but they end up being a major feature of your face and therefore require considerably more thought than a pair of shoes or something. I mean, imagine having to pick out new lips every year or two. Or, in this case, five. New frames are way overdue. I guess I'll keep my lips for the time being.    

Sifting through the old shoebox

The most awesomely dumb sign I have (ha e?) ever seen. So dumb, in fact, that the gas station that put it up is now out of business. Perhaps stuffed animals weren't the best investment. "DU YOU HA E ROLLING PAPERS" would have been a better proposition in that neighborhood, I think. 

Look at cute Roone!

Look at cute Wain!

Look at cute Eric in the 2.9 seconds of his adult life that he had hair!

There were many more pictures in the shoebox, but none were as cute as these and therefore not worth posting. Unless you want to see photo after photo of my flash-blasted, wasted-looking friends in their early 20s, but I really don't think you do. 

Adorable pestilence

I don't like raccoons. You can coo about Ranger Rick all you want, but they are thieving, destructive, flea-ridden little bastards. I firmly believe Eric and I should be the only creatures on the premises with dexterous fingers, and raccoons totally foul up that equation.

Nevertheless, we've been watching this one for a few weeks now. She's barely an adolescent, and every evening she ventures out to teach herself to climb. She was shaky at first--she kept almost falling out of branches and could barely negotiate the fence--but she gets more sure footed by the day. It's been interesting to see her progress, especially since she comes out while there's still some light in the backyard and we can watch her cruise around the tree crowns, scaring the shit out of the squirrels.

As fun as she is to watch, I'm still not sold. Those fingers, and all they imply, really give me the creeps.

Kind of had to

Stupid outlet mall.

Hail Columbia

That was kind of scary. The hail was bigger than this--at least golf ball size, I think--but by the time it had subsided enough that I felt it wasn't suicidal to poke my head out the back door and take a picture, it had melted a little.

The teevee said it was worse closer to downtown. Some people's windows got smashed out; it certainly sounded like ours were going to be. Also, the storm knocked out the power at KXAN and most of Jim Spencer's weather equipment with it. He was sad.

Update: I found a pile of hailstones that had kept each other frozen about a half an hour later. So it was at least foosball size, probably a little bigger.

Also, the hail killed a bird in the driveway.

Misspent

For all my renewed energy and blah blah blah, I sure didn't get a lot done tonight. But I couldn't help it; there were tornadoes in the area and Jim Spencer was doing wall-to-wall coverage! He dragged out all his cool weather technology, storm profilers and tornado index determinatrons and what have you, and he had this excited tremor in his voice the whole time. It was so cute!

I'm never going to amount to anything, am I?

Good morning.

There was a lull after the wedding that went on a little too long; even with the honeymoon to break it up, I couldn't catch my snap or seem to want to do much of anything. I mean, we deserved a rest, sure, but it's been over two months, and rest inevitably turns into atrophy if I fuck around doing not much of anything for too long.

I think that is ending with the beginning of summer. All of a sudden I have lots to do and lots I want to do and even more that I should do and probably won't because, let's face it, I'm primarily pleasure driven and in some ways very deeply lazy.

But I have some ideas for art projects and house projects. The basil we planted is sprouting, we moved the teepee into the sun to serve as a beanpole/flowering vine trellis, there are shows and movies to see and birthdays to celebrate, there are friends to visit and friends visiting, all my favorite swimming holes are opening, and there's even another parade to march in next month. I am all too glad to get off my ass and rejoin the living.

A healthy marriage is based on give and take.

I would really like a gas grill, but Eric's point--and it's a valid one--is that you could never do this with it.

Go, Tornados! Go! Shoo!

Yesterday some friends and I took pictures of the Concordia University campus before they tear it down this summer to make way for some massive development. It was a little strange that the place was already abandoned and sort of wrecked even though classes had just ended a few days ago. I guess everyone just gave up on the place as soon as they decided to move the school up to a much nicer facility up north.

To be honest, the place looks like it was always kind of a dump, underfunded, unloved, and architecturally unexceptional. The only thing I really hope they save there are the trees. There are some massive live oaks there that it would be a crime not to incorporate into whatever urban-infill condo hell they're planning over there.

Anyway, I took some pictures of it, but not as many as I'd planned. Mostly it was just nice to be out playing with everyone. Dan was probably able to squeeze out more interest out of the place that I was because he has that kind of eye.

Other weekend highlights: Hail! That's the third hailstorm we've had this year. No damage except the pointies got a little bruised. Also breakfast tacos, beer, and a tentative but enthusiastic plan to take a zip line canopy tour.  You can even opt to get dropped into a nice, refreshing lake at the end.  I feel it is my moral obligation to try this out.

The stupidest game

I went to my sister's house tonight to hang out. We opened a couple of beers and settled in on the back porch. As nothing very exciting is going on in either of our lives right now, the talk turned to our childhood together. It's interesting to see who remembers what; I'm older so I remember more, but my sister was more sensitive, so she remembers better.

After recounting the tornado of '83 and maligning all the other children who used to live on our cul-de-sac, we got to talking about this game we would play when our parents weren't around to stop it.

One of us would lay flat on the floor and the other would take a running leap over the prone sister's legs. The one on the floor would try to lift up her feet in time to kick the jumper down in midair. Usually you could jump clear, but sometimes you'd hesitate, get tripped, and end up tumbling into a tangle on the floor. We did this over and over and over again, for hours, well until middle school.

In retrospect, it seemed insanely dangerous. Someone could have broken her neck, for Christ's sake! But we'd been drinking a little and, well, we hadn't died from it yet, so we decided to try it again tonight to see if it was really as bad as we thought.

My sister rearranged her living room to maximize the space we had to get a running start, and I should say at this point I am very lucky to have a sister who will drag sofas across a room just to test a very insignificant point. After the floor was finally cleared, we started.

You're probably hoping for blood, or at least some bruises, but it turned out we couldn't do it. I faked her out a couple of times, and that was really funny, but I couldn't bring myself to actually try to knock her down. She felt the same way. After about 10 jumps, we gave up, went back outside, and breathlessly opened more beers.

"That was fucking stupid," I complained. "Why did we spend all that time doing that?"

"I don't know," my sister said. "Why did we eat so much glue?"

We sat in the dark for a while, contemplating.

I need...something.

Flatline

There is not much to say about a gray weekday, but I will go ahead and say it anyway. I went to work but did not work particularly hard. I had pizza for lunch and pizza for dinner. Eric and I took a walk after we ate and saw a pair of cranes while exploring the ugly eroded creek behind the neighborhood park. There were a lot of fireflies later.

I scanned in and posted some pictures for a while. I am writing this in my office, where I hardly ever go. I think I'll use it more. It's nice writing in here while Eric paints and listens to reggae in the next room. I think I need another table in here for more workspace and junk overflow, though.

Now I'm going to fold laundry and watch an episode of The Wire--I'm slowly working my way through the whole series again. I hope your day was more interesting. Maybe tomorrow will involve a car chase or something.

Owl Shack

The squirrel-a-whirl was a disaster. A raccoon stole all the corn, bending the feeder nearly in two and pulling the stakes out in the process. The hummingbirds are casual at best about visiting the feeders we put up for them, and who can blame them when they have a gigantic mat of honeysuckle just feet away? It would be like getting up from a free prime rib dinner to hit the Whataburger drive thru.

Despite our failures, or at least our lack of roaring successes, I remain hopeful that we can attract some sort of wildlife other than scavengers and vermin over here. Which is why buying an Owl Shack is the best idea ever in the entire world. Actually, making one is an even better idea, because those suckers are expensive, but sometimes you just have to accept that there are some things you should but will never actually do and therefore it's best just to drop the fifty bucks.

So. An owl house. After Eric and I were done researching, we started trying to make screech owl noises. His are whistlier, mine are from the throat. A-woowoowoowoowoo.

We actually got a response from a screech owl far down the creek, which proves that we are meant to host owls in our back yard. If one takes up residence here, we're going to name it Owlwo, which has the benefit of being a palindrome and the drawback of being really stupid. A-woowoowoowoowoo!

Sweet

Our neighbor has a giant honeysuckle bush in her backyard. It smells thick and amazing, just barely holding the line between delicious and sickly sweet. I can even smell it in my bedroom with the window closed when the sun first hits it in the morning. The best part is that we get to enjoy the way it looks and smells from afar, while our neighbor gets to contend with all the bees it attracts.

I give up

On my way to work today I saw a man with no expression on his face pull the Ron Paul sign up out of his yard and walk back to his house with it. I thought about honking and giving him a thumbs up, but it seemed too early to be a jackass. So I just laughed a little and drove on instead.