Oh, my stars and garters!

Lovely day at the sewage plant

Did you know one of the city's sewage treatment plants is also a public bird sanctuary? Neither did we, so Eric and I were forced to take another field trip today to see what that was all about.

There are not many birds there this time of year, but we did see a ton of ducks and loons, vultures, some red-winged blackbirds, and a bunch of waterbirds I couldn't identify because I am not very birdy. We also spotted five or six armadillos rooting around in the brush, one of which actually scampered away when it realized we were there. Armadillos are hilarious, gross, and awesome.

And, of course, we got to see some of the sewage treatment equipment and the city's compost piles.

Dillo dirt

Dillo; dirt

Fowl pond

Foul tank

 
No shit kidding

I have never seen these anywhere else and don't know what they are. Poopberries?

Despite the occasional poopy gusts when we were downwind from the holding tanks, which smelled bad but not as bad as you'd think, we had a nice walk around the plant. I plan to go back in spring when the bird migrations really start rocking. As a day trip, the Hornsby Bend Bird Observatory/Biosolids Management Plant gets an enthusiastic if smelly thumbs up from me.

In-town tourism

With all the Christmas cooking and eating and drinking and hosting and visiting, plus preparations for New Year's Eve--I'm marching in the First Night Austin parade, then racing home from that to have people over for dinner--I had sort of forgotten that I was on vacation. Until today, that is, when I woke up and knew I had to do something fun because it was warm and clear and perfect, the kind of weather that makes my northern friends cry and ensures I will never leave this beautiful if congenitally stupid state.

Eric and I drank coffee for a while trying to think of the most fun thing we could do and decided to ride our bikes around in the sunshine.

We rode to Mueller because it's close and I like to go down there every few months to see how things are coming along with their little urban-village-from-scratch project. It's coming along pretty well. The houses that are finished are nice if a little dull, design-wise, and I'm hoping they'll look better once the trees come in.

The park is very pretty, with meandering trails and a retention pond that doubles as a reflective pool and classy bathrooms and a fire pit, and again, it will be even nicer when the trees mature.

Although the park is lovely, it's also a little sterile. We took off to the east, where there are still remnants of the old airport here and there.

We've been out there before to look around and take pictures, but a lot of land that had been fenced off before is for some reason accessible now. We had a great time riding around through the rocks and debris, trying to identify things in the rubble, and we weren't the only ones. We saw several other people around, riding bikes, walking dogs, and even pushing a stroller over piles of rocks and dirt. 

The Baths of Caracalla, Rome

A bathroom of Robert Mueller Municipal Airport, Austin

Inside the rubble canyon

Runway lights

Then we rode up the runway and took a few pictures because it is fun to ride on a runway, and the view from there will be very different soon.

For a day's excursion, you could do a lot worse.

Front row

I am growing fat on holiday torpor and turkey-and-mayonnaise sandwiches. Luckily, I had some excitement today to break through all that this afternoon when some joyriding kids ditched a stolen truck in the next-door neighbors' driveway. There were cops running around up and down the street and in the ravine out back, guys fingerprinting the truck, and people standing out in front of their houses with their arms crossed all up and down the street as the tiny drama played out. At the height of things we had five police cars, a tow truck, seven cops, and three handcuffed teenagers right in front of my house.

The cops started making calls, and as it got dark the kids' unhappy-looking parents started showing up to take them home. Finally, after about two hours, they hauled the truck away and the last of the cop cars pulled out. That meant my unexpected source of entertainment had dried up for the day, and I was forced to go to the kitchen and make yet another turkey sandwich.

My favorite part was when the cop found the rightful owner of the ballcap that had been dropped in the neighbors' backyard during the botched getaway. He put the hat on the kid, who was still in handcuffs, studied the effect, pulled the bill over to the side, and decided that didn't work either. Then he pulled it around to the back, gave it one final, artful tug, and nodded with satisfaction. The kid was not amused, but I was. I really wanted to take a picture, but I have learned that cops really don't like that, and I probably wouldn't have shown it to you anyway because that would be unethical for a lot of different reasons.

A message from second-grade me:

I can tell the New Year's picture is supposed to be a noisemaker amidst confetti, but I have no idea what's going on with that Christmas picture--it's a rainbow-enshrouded tree topped by a penis and surrounded by intestines, maybe?

Although my drawing style has evolved somewhat over the past 26 or so years, my sentiments remain exactly the same. Our holidays have been very full of food, booze, and family, and that's how I like them. I hope yours were pretty great too.

Crap night

Poor Sweetloaf got sick and crapped all over the carpet and, it probably goes without saying, himself. Now he is banished out in the cold to make sure he's got it all out of his system, so to speak, and our house smells of the unholy combination of Resolve and cat shit.

The situation was even more annoying than it might have been because I discovered the horrible truth while we were right in the middle of cleaning the fridge, so we were uncomfortably aware that all our perishables were out rotting on the counter while we ran around playing search and destroy for an hour.

I wish I could find the post I read a few years ago by some woman who set her Roomba before she left for work and returned home to a carpet full of intricate loops of ground-in cat shit. That's a much better story than this one.

Movin' Pitchers

I've spent a lot of my evening browsing the Texas Archive of the Moving Image website. A lot of the Austin-related footage was donated by a cameraman from the television station KTBC, so it's mostly from the 60s and covers the spectrum from shots of the Butter Krust Bakery bread truck fleet to film of a memorial service for JFK at the State Capitol. A lot of it is silent and unedited, but it's still fun to see the landscape and how it's changed in the last 40 to 50 years.

They also have a nice round-up of the history of Austin up to 1962 and random families' home movies and I'm sure a lot of other stuff I haven't found yet. You should go poke around if you like that sort of thing.

Might could use a pedicure

 

General condition of my toe aside, you see that tiny strip of polish up there? That's from our wedding. That was what? Nine and a half months or so ago?

This is not neglect, exactly. After a certain point I decided to leave the polish there on purpose because I was curious how long it would take to disappear completely. Still, no one can say I spend too much time on my personal appearance.

Mallfall

Eric and I were browsing Highland Mall today for tights and furniture. That place has been dying slowly for years, but its demise is visibly gathering momentum now.

New York and Company: 75 percent off EVERYTHING THIS LOCATION ONLY!

Fye: Our final day of business is January 24. Please don't ask "Why?" Everything on sale until then. Thanks for the memories.

Some store I've never heard of that seemed to carry a lot polyester halter tops and wedges with clear plastic heels: Everything $13.67!

Banana Republic, gone. JCPenney, long gone. Dillard's has an entire floor closed. They simply blocked the escalator with a bunch of boxes and extra display racks and labeled it "Not In Use" on the store map.

I know malls in general are falling out of favor, but I could never figure out why a mall in that location--right next to the interstate, close to UT and lots of solidly middle class neighborhoods--did so poorly.

I don't really care if it goes or not, except that it's close to my house and therefore extremely handy when I wait until the last minute to buy a dress and some shoes for an event or something and don't want to drive around all goddamn day doing it. Other than that, whatever. I'm sure there's a better use for the land, or at least there will be after the economy improves. Still, it's been really interesting to watch something deteriorate like that over the years.

Fun Highland Mall facts: I used to work in the Hickory Farms store there, logging daily sales reports and taking catalog orders. I didn't last long, but I do remember the owners had hung a beef stick over the desk when they opened the store in the 1970s--their equivalent of a framed dollar bill, I guess. It was a tad wizened but remarkably well preserved. Also, I saw Trent Reznor there once. I sort of followed him for a while but gave up when he went into Babbage's. Also my stepmom worked at the Joske's there when she was in college, but I forget what she did. Sell cosmetics? Or maybe it was Foley's.

The end about the mall.

Hut

I got asked to be in another marching band. Sort of a regular thing, practice on Sundays, some marching practice even. The only problem is that I suck at playing clarinet now, and it's tricky klezmer music. The other clarinetist and the soprano sax player are good, as in actual musicians, and they were able to barely glance at the music before playing it, fluidly and perfectly, from memory.

I can't read music anymore, if I ever could, so all I could make out of the jumble of 16th notes was this one note at the end of a much-repeated complicated phrase. So the other two would work their crazy magic, and then I would chime in helpfully at the end with my single B: B!

I can still march like crazy, though, and I'm confident I can keep up if I practice a little. Hopefully no one will roll their eyes too much in the meantime.

Dorkorations!

We have been getting all Christmas-style around here. We never really did that before before, but this year we are hosting the family Christmas dinner(s) for the first time, so we figured we should do something to festify the house some.

This is our super duper rosemary Christmas tree. Every year I buy one, and every year Eric tries to talk me out of it. He says they're stupid. They cost twice as much as regular rosemary bushes that are the same size or bigger but just not pruned into a nice tree shape. They die too quickly and that's depressing.

But they're like 10 bucks; who cares? Except that last part is true, it is sort of depressing when they die. So this year after our annual rosemary argument that I always win because seriously, what the hell, I agreed to repot it immediately and plant it in the ground after New Year's. It's quite dapper and will do very nicely in the backyard this spring.

Dan made these Christmas cookies and decorated them for us. Eric reports that sad tiny green penis man* was delicious.

Here is my sister's contribution. She had a bigger and brighter vision, but I really like how it turned out. It's cheerful and charming, with just the slightest hint of whorehouse to it.

A terrarium ornament. I saw a tutorial online and thought that was brilliant but in actuality it was a giant pain to make and you can't even see the succulents because of the condensation and also I'm worried the amber glass won't let enough light in. I still like it in theory.

And then there is the tree.  After my sister** finished jazzing up our front hall she helped Eric and me decorate it last night.

I love our tree. The tag says it's a noble fir. At first I was dubious about getting a real tree because of the needles and the sap and the fire, but now I am a convert. It smells amazing. Also, for once procrastination was to our benefit because it was only $20 on clearance.

And, oh, look! Did Santa leave something under the tree already? Something soft and nice and fuzzy? Something soft and nice and fuzzy that occasionally shits all over himself*** when he's scared? Wow, thanks, Santa!

*So many modifiers! I will let you sort them out.

**I am supposed to save the topsy-turvy tale of buying lights for her blog, so go bug her if you want to read about why we had such a hard time getting the tree lit.

***True story. Sigh.

Memory

 

I would be remiss if I didn't take a break from writing about snow and whooping cranes and stupid cats for a moment to talk about my mom, who died of lymphoma 20 years ago today.

I'll just go ahead and say that she and I were not very easy with each other a lot of the time. It was rough, and more so when she got sick. We felt closer to and more responsible for each other than ever after that, but her pain and my adolescence and our mutual fear and frustration complicated things even further. But we were lucky, too, because we loved each other, and we had just enough time at the end to tell each other that so there would be no mistake.

I've spent a lot of time over the years thinking about all this, being angry, trying to understand how someone can just be gone. There is so much to go over; anyone who has a mom knows how convoluted these things can get. I will say it's gotten easier. It will never be better--I don't think it's supposed to be--but it is easier.

One of the nicest surprises in my life was realizing that my relationship with my mom has evolved as I've gotten older. I used to believe it would always be static, that I would grow and change and she would be stuck at 40 (so young!) and recede a little more each day, but it hasn't been like that, exactly. Some of the details have been fuzzed away with time, sure, but I also feel like I know her more every year.

There are also the things I've always known: She loved my sister and me. She was smart and decisive. Being tall early in life made her awkward. She had a lot of friends, good ones. She had a goofy sense of humor. She could be deliciously catty. She was tickled by things like growing strawberries and really good ice skaters in the Olympics. She cried at sad news stories on TV and then laughed at herself for doing it. She hated knowing she wouldn't be around to see how everything turned out. She is missed, still, by a lot of people.

It's a relief to get to today and mostly just feel very, very sad.

I wanna fly with the whooping cranes.

Seriously, screw swimming with dolphins.

This is by far the sweetest thing I've seen all week, except for the last 26 seconds. Those are horrible, horrible seconds and almost ruined the whole thing for me. Skip those if you want your delight to remain clear and true. Otherwise, hooray, for whooping cranes are delightful.

Gamut

At one o'clock this afternoon I was doing yard work in short sleeves and sweating freely because it was 80 degrees. Then a front came through, and then we had thunder, and now it's sleeting outside. Lei-Leen and I even had a sleet ball fight!

I find this kind of delightful.

Update: 2:43 a.m.: And then! Rain! And sleet! And rain! And THUNDERSLEET. And then snow, like for real snow, big, wet clumpy flakes drifting around for an hour or two.

Proof that snow did fall from our sky

I was at Eric's bar when the snow started in earnest, and when the call of SNOW! IT'S SNOWING! went out, the whole place emptied out into the parking lot and everyone squealed and danced and took pictures with their phones. And then all those phones started ringing and everyone answered them and yelled some variation of, "I know! It's SO AWESOME!" Some especially drunk people went around to all the cars gathering snow off the roofs so they could have a soggy, pathetic snowball fight. Which is totally understandable because this really doesn't happen so much here.

After that we got some more beers, and it snowed and sleeted again and it was very pretty and novel, and everyone was happy, or at least I was because my inner weather geek doesn't often get days like this.

It is still above freezing, though, so the snow didn't stick and roads were clear on the way home, and now we're both warm and safe and about to crack one more beer and eat some mac-n-cheese and go to bed, the end.

Failure

My hanging tomato plants died in the cold while we were out of town. I watered them, sang to them, steeped manure tea--manure tea!--for them, and covered them with sheets on chilly nights. I all but did back handsprings for them, but I didn't get one single edible tomato out of the damn things.

The basil died too, but not before we got several pasta dishes, sandwiches, and a really good batch of pesto out of it. The pepper plant coughed up a few jalapenos, and the lettuce plants are still okay and just about ready to go. That gives me a little consolation, but I really, really wanted those tomatoes.

Next year I will do better, maybe by buying plants that aren't such ungrateful jerks.

Viva

God, Las Vegas is strange. We were only gone about 52 hours, but there were so many blinky lights and bleeps and bloops and crowds of people to muscle through that those two days felt like a week. My family are all big Vegas people, but I guess I missed that gene. I find it extremely obnoxious that there is absolutely nothing on the Strip that is not designed for the sole purpose of getting you to zone out and spend lots and lots of money.

Hi, kids! I've seen better days!

Hi, kids! I will haunt your soul and EAT YOUR DREAMS.

But you get no points for being cynical in Las Vegas, so if you are like me and you go, you have to go ahead and embrace the whole mess, or else you will be crabby and miserable your entire vacation, and that is no fun at all.

Actually, it seemed like even a lot of people who were wholeheartedly into it were crabby and miserable. Almost every time we ventured outside I saw people who were doing things like crying because they lost all their money at craps or screaming "Fuck you!" "No! Fuck YOU!" at each other in the middle of the sidewalk. I guess you can't have a playground for adults and not expect people to get overstimulated and throw tantrums every now and again, especially if you don't give them anywhere to sit and make it difficult to find a drink of water.

Darned decent view

Fountains fountaining out

But anyway, I did embrace it, mostly, and ended up having a really good time. We stayed at the tacky but not-tacky-enough Flamingo and got an upgrade to a 27th-floor room from which we could watch the Bellagio fountains do their thing every half hour. I won $250 at video poker (four aces, baby!) 10 minutes before catching a cab to the airport, which means I came out just ahead, gambling-wise. I ate so much bacon at the all-you-can-eat champagne brunch buffet this morning that I hurt myself and was seriously considering purging to make it through the rest of the afternoon. I know, gross.

My bearded superstar

There was so much walking coupled with so much eating and drinking this weekend that my body got kind of weird, and most of today I experienced the unpleasant sensation of trying to push a bloated pregnant-spider-looking abdomen around on two sore, sinewy toothpick legs. Whew.

My pictures of the reception were not so great, but I'm pretty sure there was plenty of documentation. Anyway, don't they look terrific?

And of course there was the wedding, which was the reason for the trip. The wedding was beautiful, and dinner was good, and drinks were plentiful, and the bride and groom looked so good and so happy, and I don't know, it was just very fun and nice. I liked it a lot.

I'm calling the weekend a success, and now I'm glad to be home, where it's quiet and humid and I have managed to keep the exact same amount of money in my wallet since we paid for parking at the airport two hours ago. It's a pleasant feeling.

Whirl

I am not usually one to tell dreams, but this morning I had one in which all the old ladies on my street (and in the dream there were many of them) pulled their perfectly waxed Lincolns out of their driveways in unison and started performing an intricate car ballet in the middle of the block. It was fantastic. I slept an extra half hour just to watch it play out. If this trip to Vegas I'm about to leave for is half as entertaining, I'll be happy.

Nooo, Joolie, don't be stupid!

My bedtime is inching forward a half an hour or so every day I've been on night shift. I always do this. The ideal is to get off at midnight, eat a snack, drink a beer, and go to bed at two so I can get up at 10 and be out in the world by noon. The reality is that I will stay up as late as possible no matter what, then sleep until the absolute dire last minute that won't either make me late for wherever I need to be or make me feel like a total lame-o shitbag.

So! Action. I am going to close the laptop and go straight to bed now. Except first I have to coax the dumb cat out of Eric's truck, which he jumped into through an open window. He's currently peering out at me over the dashboard looking absolutely terrified. How bad do you think it would be if I just reached in and honked the horn? (I'm garageblogging. It's cold outside.)

Also I'd like an edit function that tells me when I'm going on and on and on

Microsoft Word is a clunky, counterintuitive, steaming piece of dung, or at least the 2003 version I have access to is. I have been using some version of Word since the late 80s, but I'm just now realizing how crappy it is. I really can't believe it doesn't do the fairly simple things I think it should. Numbering pages in any sort of unorthodox fashion is ridiculously complicated, for just one tiny little example that makes me want to set everything around me on fire until it all burns, burns to cinders and dust, until the world is destroyed and civilization must begin anew, and hopefully this time it will be made up of people who are nicer to each other and are also better at writing the most basic goddamn word processing programs I mean Jesus Christ how hard can it be to make it so you right-click a point in a document and tell it you want to start numbering on that page instead of creating sections and delinking headers and footers and oh my god it's all so stupid hate hate die.

That's just one little problem I have had; I have also found creating tables and embedding graphics a mite vexing.

Maybe it's that the good programs I use leave me very impatient with the bad ones. Photoshop is a far more complicated program in general but is much better designed than Word; one is a pleasure to use and try new things in, while getting the other to do what I want is akin to pulling a splinter out of my finger with a hacksaw. Has anyone tried Adobe Buzzword? I might, and I will let you know what I think if I do.