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03/29/2010 at 10:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (22) | TrackBack (0)
I almost forgot about this one! It's not really a cuss, but it's public and raunchy, so that's close enough for me.
It must have taken a while to get everything just so:
(Taken at the Home Depot in The Shops at Arbor Walk, an ugly, dangerous, not-very-accessible strip mall masquerading as a Concept Shopping Destination. It has a DSW, a JoAnn superstore, and a really nice Spec's, so I am compelled to visit more often than I'd like.)
03/29/2010 at 03:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
Eric came home from work tonight flushed and energized. Roone had brought in a package of ghost peppers, supposedly the hottest pepper in the world.
The boys sampled a small piece, turned bright red, sweated, and cried. When they had finally recovered, they shared their new toy with some customers, who were transformed from hearty men into drooling weep-bags after 30 seconds.
That little turd-looking thing to the left there is a ghost pepper. My interest in sampling it is hovering around negative 9,012, especially after hearing Eric's description, and double especially after watching this video (the pepper tonight was dried and so not quite as potent).
If I sound a little grumpy about this, it's because Roone and Eric have been driving me crazy for over a decade with their longstanding heat war*, wherein they try to outdo each other with spicy food. I have spent many otherwise lovely meals rolling my eyes because those two were staring each other down with hot-pink, watery eyes as they hiccuped violently and dripped all over their quadruple-chili Thai food.
Tonight, though is going to force a truce, for how can you top the hottest pepper in the world? (Two hottest peppers in the world? Oh, please, god, no.)
Here, have a nice, cooling picture of catfish at the Asian grocery as an antidote! They are all doomed.
*Still infinitely better than their old fart wars. They would each eat huge servings of beans, peppers, onions, and cabbage before they worked a shift together, then come home and regale me with competing versions of how they "got" each other.
03/25/2010 at 11:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (11) | TrackBack (0)
So Blogger is killing all their FTP blogs, of which I apparently have one. I have no idea why I ever used FTP unless I was trying to be some badass; I'm not even sure what it is anymore. The FTP Blogspot blog is the predecessor to this one, which is nice for me to scroll through every few years like I might a scrapbook or an old journal, if I made scrapbooks or used to write in journals, but it is otherwise completely inactive and probably never read by anyone. So is it even worth it to migrate? Probably? Maybe not? I guess I should see what all I have to do first, but I bet they made it pretty easy; Blogger is usually good about that.
I guess I'll look at the blogs and the subpages one more time and then decide.
http://starsandgarters.blogspot.com/
http://starsandgarters.blogspot.com/Jill/index.html
03/22/2010 at 11:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBack (0)
Hi. How are you? I am ok.
Yeah?
No way!
Whoa.
It just goes to show you.
That? Oh, no, it wasn't really a big deal.
Well, nice talking to you. See you later.
03/22/2010 at 10:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Fuck you, "D". Fuck you forever. Fuck you into the sidewalk. I wonder what "D" did.
I watched a man tape this sign up with great efficiency while I was eating breakfast at Opal Divine's today. No one else at the table thought it was as funny as I did. Of course, I was the only one who had these particular words staring her in the face for the rest of the meal. It was kind of surreal.
This is not a cuss, but it is kind of distasteful, right? Besides, it inspired Eric and me to go around saying "Oh, pig vaginas!" as an expression of mild disgust or dismay. It's possible we will use the phrase for the rest of our lives. I hope so, anyway.
03/21/2010 at 08:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0)
That's okay. Styro did!
03/16/2010 at 05:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Everything is blooming and sprouting, the air smells fantastic as long as you stay away from the corner of the yard where the cats like to crap, and the temperature is back up in the seventies and eighties where it belongs. Oh, yes.
I spent most of the weekend in the yard, prepping beds and repotting and transplanting stuff. I hosed five pounds of horror-movie-grade black sludge out of the rain barrel and reseated its base. I put out the hummingbird feeders. I pulled so many weeds I can see their evil starburst shapes whenever I close my eyes for a few minutes.
Today Eric and I planted switchgrass seeds on the hill out back in the hopes that the grass's six-foot roots will help the soil stay put until we can afford to get the crumbling retaining walls rebuilt. The footing back there is extremely precarious in spots, so I spent a lot of my afternoon crabwalking, standing on one foot, hanging by my fingers, or sliding on my belly. We got most of the seed planted in big, satisfying rows and secured with sheets of burlap, so hopefully the gentle rain forecast for Tuesday will materialize and help things along.
Working on the slope is scary and hard and kind of horrifying, but it's strangely fun too. It seems way more adventurous than mowing the lawn, at any rate. Which I also did this weekend.
All of a sudden I would like nothing more than to sit and watch TV until my eyes fall out. I think I will do that as soon as I'm done with this post. I think I'm done with this post now.
03/14/2010 at 09:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
The Palo Duro Canyon is beautiful. Stupidly beautiful, really, and incongruous in the Texas Panhandle. You could drive right past it and never guess the brown, flat plains drop away to something so colorful and dramatic.
I think the canyon deserves a better park. Don't get me wrong, I love state parks, and Texas Parks and Wildlife does very good things with criminally limited resources. But something this lovely really could use nicer facilities and more sophisticated educational programs and literature, plus more firepower when it comes to acquiring more of the canyon and making it accessible. This really should be more of a destination in the state. It's a shame that it's not.
Still, the park is pretty damn cool. Look at the CCC cabin we stayed in! It was very cute. Although it had a mouse, and the roof leaked when it rained really hard the first night, and while the bathrooms were close by, it's never close enough when you have to put on a coat or don a poncho every time you have to pee.
Besides all that, the chimney didn't draw properly, so even though we followed the instructions to keep our fire small, it was a windy night and the room filled with a disturbing and then dangerous amount of smoke. Our romantic anniversary fire ended with Eric pitching damp, smoldering logs out the door with a pair of hot dog tongs while the smoke detector shrieked and I stamped out embers all over the floor.
Also Randall County, like most of the Panhandle, is dry, so for god's sake bring lots of beer, or at least be sure to load up in Lubbock.
(The whole weekend was kind of a mixed bag, in case you couldn't tell.)
The drive there and back was extremely entertaining. There is so much to look at in a seemingly empty landscape, and on the way home we had a really good oldies station out of Lubbock to help us along.
So we had kind of a weird, soggy, not-very-well planned weekend at the Palo Duro Canyon, but there was a lot to look at and think about, and it was mostly fun and almost never boring. I know the park does have nicer cabins with bathrooms in them available. I have no idea if the chimneys in those are more effective, but if I go again I will spring for one and find out.
03/10/2010 at 11:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0)
03/09/2010 at 10:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (14) | TrackBack (0)
Google Street View is pretty great, although I guess I didn't really need to refer to it to know what driving through the Texas Panhandle will look like.
This will be our view for several hours this weekend, but from what I hear you drive and drive, through Abilene and Lubbock and Plainview and Tulia and Happy,* and it all looks pretty much like that picture above, and then you take State Highway 217 off to the east, and you drive on that for a while, and then you come around this bend and there is a dropoff into this huge dramatic canyon right in the middle of the flattest, emptiest, crankiest part of the whole state. And that canyon is where Eric and I will hang out until Tuesday, hiking, drinking beer, and grilling steaks.
We leave Saturday, and I can't wait. I haven't even looked at it on Google Street View because I don't want to spoil the surprise.
*According to the Handbook of Texas Online: "Happy uses the slogan, 'the town without a frown.'"
03/03/2010 at 11:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (15) | TrackBack (0)