Oh, my stars and garters!

Day of beauty

Who knew the secret of thrift store success was to hit the suburbs?

Who knew that I could buy four shirts, two skirts, some boots, and a pair of pants in one day without having a nervous breakdown?

Who knew that the woman who cuts my hair could talk so long and so earnestly about energy flow?

And who knew how relieved I would be that I took care of all this personal appearance crap in one afternoon and don't have to think about it for at least another three months?

Wow.

Our house is up for rent. We really for real are moving.

Now we just need to find a place. Shit!

Choices

If you would like to watch a video of a plastic surgeon performing liposuction on himself, click here. (Registration required but well worth it.)

If you would not like to watch a video of a plastic surgeon performing liposuction on himself, you may click here instead.

Cop-out

Due to my reluctance to rummage through hundreds of photos, I have decided not to post the embarrassing pictures of Wain. Besides, he asked me not to.

But, because I am a bitch, I feel duty-bound to tell you that they depict him on his 28th birthday, wearing nothing but a pair of blue panties and a big smirk. It was magic.

Lullaby

Hearing Television and sizzling Elgin sausage at the same time makes me unreasonably happy that I'm up late and a little drunk.

Also. Happy birthday to Wain, whom I will humiliate tomorrow if I get up the gumption to locate a few certain photos and scan them in.

You should listen to this story.

Receptionista was on Public Radio Weekend today! She sent in a story about sleep last week and they asked her to come in and read it on the air.

It's a sweet, funny story, and she sounds great. You can listen to it here; her segment is toward the end, around the 45-minute mark or so.

Go!

Texas state holiday

Happy LBJ's Birthday, everyone!

Did you know?

Smirnoff Ice Triple Black tastes like a wine cooler that's been strained through a bum's pant leg.

Not recommended.

I'm better now.

The angst has lifted.

Now I'm ready to have a pleasant evening entertaining my sister.

Thank you for your time and attention.

Afternoon angst

Ham Day!

Thursday is ham day at the cafeteria. My coworker loves ham day, so every Thursday she walks up and down the hall, inviting people to go get ham with her. "Who wants ha-am?" she says. She makes it sound very enticing.

I like ham day okay. I used to like big hunks of beef day, which is Wednesday, but that got kind of unappetizing after a while, especially when they started trying to sneak in so much gristle.

Usually I try to bring my lunch, rendering my knowledge of the cafeteria menu moot. But today I forgot, so I've got a styrofoam box full of lukewarm ham on the desk in front of me right now.

There is very little going on in my life right now, but I'm sure you can't tell.

Beware vibrio vulnificus!

If you've run out of things to worry about, you can always fret about being attacked by flesh-eating bacteria while hanging out in the Gulf of Mexico.

One

Another grocery store story:

Tonight I saw a middle-aged man climb into a grocery shelf to get at a bag of pork rinds that was blocked by a huge pallet of boxes.

When I say "climb into," I mean his entire body was on the shelf, parallel to the floor, as he rooted around for his delicious treat.

I love the grocery store.

I'm devastated.

It's a dark day.

We were so close.

Those of you who have been following the naked mole rat saga will know just how sad this is. If you haven't, you can catch up here or here.

From Vickie:

Well, there’s no better way to put this… there are no rubber naked mole rats to be had.

Maria from Dan’s Crafts and Things called me this weekend to tell me she tried everything she could. The company you posted the locator page from discontinued them. Maria asked them to scour the warehouse and there are none left. I am broken hearted as I am sure you will be, too. Now the world will call me a liar cuz you told everyone I found one. Please send my apologies to that woman.

Oh, Vickie, we don't blame you! We blame cold, cruel K&M Toys, for recklessly and foolishly assuming that the market for rubber naked mole rats was tapped out.

Discontinued? That's just crazy talk.

I'm convinced this is hopeless, so I really am giving up for all time. But if you ever should run across one, please do me a favor and buy it, then get in touch with me. I'll send you something nice, I promise.

Why work is not so bad:

My coworker Amy just did a fairly creditable Oompa Loompa dance for us in the hallway. She sang, too. It pretty much ruled.

Baby rhino!

I'm not planning on having a baby zoo animal of the week feature or anything, for that would be lame.

Still, check out San Antonio's baby rhino.

Awww.

Held hostage

So Eric and I go to the grocery store to get dinner and a few odds and ends, like beer. The store's packed but we split up and get our stuff fairly quickly. We finish up over by the lone checkstand by the pharmacy door, and there are only two people in line, so we go over there and divvy our purchases.

Even for just two people, it takes an extraordinarily long time to get to me. Then I recognize the cashier from previous visits and realize our terrible mistake.

I have a complicated formula for figuring out what line to get into at the store, based on the age of the customers, the amount of produce in their carts, and the carriage and facial expression of the cashiers. Well, I fucked up and didn't use it tonight. We'd stepped into the trap of a cashier who is very nice, but very, very literal minded.

I've worked customer service with people like that, and it's a nightmare. They can't exercise any sort of judgment; they have to stick to the script or they fall apart. You can't argue with them because in their minds they're just doing what they're supposed to be doing, and you can't convince them that sometimes you just have to say fuck it, it's probably not worth their time to try to upsell cigarettes to every single customer who walks through the door when there's fifteen people in line, the toilet is overflowing, and two drunk guys are about to beat the shit out of each other in the parking lot. "But the manager said..." they say when you ask them to stop, looking hurt and confused, while you weigh the drawbacks to caving their skulls in with the corner of the credit card machine and dragging them to the walk-in cooler, where they surely would rot very slowly.

Aah.

Who knew that staying up late watching CHiPS reruns could be so therapeutic?

The cobras have moved on, best not to speculate how. My body still aches and my face is still a little leaky, but I'm tired of sitting around the house feeling sorry for myself. Tomorrow I'll gladly go back to work just for the sake of getting out of here for a while.

Oh, hey, don't ever watch dressage on TV. Actually do watch it, just to briefly admire the pretty horsies, and marvel at the training that must go into the steps. Then fleetingly be amazed at how quickly you get bored with watching it. Then--and this is key--immediately change the channel.

Don't be like Eric and me and sit and watch some horse prance around and do an endless interpretation of the Ministry of Silly Walks sketch just because you lack the will to pick up the remote and push a few buttons. But now that I think about it, maybe it wasn't a question of will. Maybe we were stunned into submission by the awesome power of the event's tedium.

Open letter to everyone besides the baby cobras:

Sick people are boring. I promise not to post again until I can talk about something other than my physical well-being.

Bye.

Open letter to the nest of baby cobras that have apparently taken up residence in my intestines:

It was nice of you to visit. Really, it's been fun, but I think it's time you moved on.

Go on. Scoot.

(Fucking Vitamin C.)

Oh, no!

I'm a disease vector. I gave Eric my cold, and now there is a limp, defeated pile of boyfriend lying in my bed.

I think I'm going to write this weekend off as a total loss, start fresh tomorrow.

Joolie stupid

Joolie sad.

Hi, everyone! I have a question!

So, just out of curiosity, at what point does it become pathetic to have a cold and then get off work and buy a bottle of bourbon because a shot or two of that is supposed to be good for colds, and then--oops, tee-hee--drink like six or seven shots of it, maybe more or maybe less, does it really matter--and then sit around and complain about totally stupid shit to your roommate and then drive him off to bed, but not before talking him out of most of his cigarettes, and then heat up soup and carry it to the computer while splashing a stinky soup trail throughout the house due to your diminished motor skills that you then have to go back through the house and scootch a paper towel over with your feet so it won't smell bad or be sticky in the morning, and then write post about what a dumbass you are because apparently you have this need to embarrass yourself? Certainly you have to be pretty old and to have done this like 20 or 30 times before it's truly pathetic, right?

Right?

Fast ferry!

You can take a ferry from Rochester to Toronto. So we're gonna. I've never been to Toronto, but I've heard it's great.

What should I do if I only have one day in Canada?

Sleep

Have you ever woken up to find that the sleep goop that oozes out of your eye has meshed your eyelashes together and sealed them shut?

It's really nasty.

Electrical storm

My sister called tonight to tell me there was insane lightning going on to the north. I went out to the front yard, and sure enough, there was constant bright lightning off in the distance, several flashes at once, on and on and on. In fact, it's two hours later and it's still going crazy up there. While I was outside, it started to rain, just light, little drops. Which was weird because there were no clouds directly above us, except for a few wispy little cirrus things. Those blew away, and it kept sprinkling. Wain and I thought maybe the upper-level wind was blowing it in from the storm, but since it was about 40 miles away, that seemed unlikely. The only explanation I could find is here, something about supersaturation without condensation or some such. Well, we were bored, so despite my slight fever (99.4 at last self-indulgent check), we got in the car and drove to the parking garage canyon by my work. We went to the top of two of them, trying to get a good vantage point. It was nice. We were just high enough that it was quiet and the breeze was cooler. We felt like we were up and a little bit away from everything. We watched the lightning until we got bored and went home. And now it looks like it's about our turn to get clobbered, so I'm going out front to watch it blow in until the Daily Show. After that, I'll go to bed and have fever dreams. I hope they're colorful and fantastic and not dark and horrific.

I don't want to post today

So I'm not going to.

Wait, I just did. Shit!

Storytime

I strongly urge you to get in on the ground floor with Can-Smashing Robot's serial "The Man Who Refused to Take His Gorilla Mask Off."

Installments I, II, and III are already up. Read those now, and be sure to check back next week when, according to the site, Steve will place a personal ad in a local alternative newsweekly.

Dorkout!

Who wants to leave the 666th comment on this site?

Do it, and I'll send you something eeeevil.

So sad

I am stuck at work late and have an incredibly painful pimple on my left ear.

Whooza itty bitty?

Omigod, the Houston Zoo has a baby elephant!

An old coworker came by the office earlier today with her baby human, and he was pretty cute. But holy shit, y'all, baby elephant!

Busch really is bad.

Did you hear the one about the bear that drank all the beer? Thirty-six cans of Ranier, but only one can of Busch.

It reminded me of the one about the big bad bear that walked into a bar and wanted a beer.

The bartender said he was sorry, they didn't serve big bad bears beer at that bar.

So the big bad bear grabbed a cocktail waitress and ripped her apart with his teeth and claws and ate her. Then he said "RAR! I'm a big bad bear and I need a beer!"

The bartender said he was sorry, now there was no way he would serve the big bad bear beer because it would be even more dangerous than before.

The big bad bear asked why, and the bartender said, "Because that was a bar bitch you ate."

That joke is really no fun if it's written down. Oh, well, sorry if I ruined it for you for all time!

Visit

Last night I got my plane ticket to see Vickie, her twin sister, Valerie, and Valerie's new baby for a week in September.

They live in Rochester, NY, and I've known them since I want to say fifth grade when we were on rival softball teams, or maybe sixth, when we were in rival reading classes. (Ooh, those Porter twins thought they were such hot shit.)

Either way, I started hanging out with them in seventh grade, and all of a sudden we formed an intense three-way clique. We commandeered my dad's VHS camera and made ridiculous, horribly edited movies. We tried to get a bandana-around-the-pant-leg fad going at school. We went to the grocery store and smushed up all the lipstick and blocked the aisles with rows of toilet plungers. We thought we were extremely cool. We were sadly deluded, but it was really fucking fun anyway.

Vickie and me, last day of eighth grade, 1989

They moved with their family to Rochester right before we all started ninth grade, and we cried and promised to write and swore that we'd never have friends like that again, ever. Despite being 14, fickle, distracted, and otherwise completely full of shit (well, I was), we stayed in touch. It was easy.

I ended up being much closer to Vickie, just one of those things, and she and I try to see each other at least every other year. So far I've been up to Rochester six times, including in 1994, when Vickie graciously put me up in her apartment for a month.

So, yeah, I get to see my really cool old friends in nineteen days. I'm excited. They're excited. I'll come back and tell you all about it.

Dinner

Eric made a lovely meal of pasta with anchovy-basil marinara sauce and bread and pesto. After that, we all had a treat. Wain and I gathered around and popped Eric's sugary sweet honey balls in our mouths.

Ok, now what?

Moving

Eric and I are moving into a new house in 45 days.

I've lived in my current house for six years. It's a great house, big and welcoming and comfortable, and I've enjoyed living with my friends, but now I'm dead sick of it.

I know I need to dislodge myself, and it'll be great when everything is all unpacked and rented and done, but right now I'm not looking forward to this at all. In fact, I'm dreading it.

I'm such a baby.

!Viva Vonnegut!

Stupid

My weekend

...was kind of dull. Nice, but dull. (I thought the Great Steve Miller Band Bowel Movement on Friday night portended great things, but sadly, that was the climax. Well, that's okay. It's incredibly hard to beat something like that.)

Friday night: Fun work-people party at Robert's girlfriend's house. Beer was drunk. I fell backwards in a lawn chair and scraped my shoulder, but I think it that was due more to my innate dipshittiness than intoxication. Much, much more beer was drunk afterwards with Dan, Choo, and, later, Eric.

Saturday: Slept until two. Had a blinding headache until five. Hands didn't stop shaking until seven, when, huh, coincidentally, I drank a coffee-and-whiskey as fast as I could. Watched SubUrbia on cable. This further confirmed my belief that Richard Linklater movies bore the living shit out of me.

Today: Another attempt at a lino cut. It was supposed to be of Eric, but the result looked more like the guy who played the pedophile in Happiness. This annoyed me, so no, you don't get to see it.

Also a trip to the Paper Place for beautiful bulk card stock and a run to the very crowded HEB for food. Almost every single person in there deserved to be horsewhipped, but I managed to leave without incident. Eric made delicious vegetarian stuffed peppers that I ate while I watched my stories.

I also started Scott McCloud's Reinventing Comics, the follow-up to Understanding Comics. Understanding Comics is informative, insightful, and fun as hell to read, and if you like comic books at all you should find a copy and read it this week. I loved Understanding Comics, but Reinventing Comics was written in 2000, and since a lot of it is about the Internet and digital art, it seems a little dated already. But I like his style, and I think it'll still be worth a read.

"Worth a read." Nice. Do you like how I said that as though my time is so very fucking precious that I'll only deign to do things if they're in some way worthwhile or edifying, even though it's at the end of a post that basically admitted I spent the previous 48 hours wandering around the house nursing a hangover? Because personally, I thought that was kind of hot.

Dear Me,

Go to bed, you big dummy.

Love,
Me