I did such a huge double-take on my way to work this morning that it actually involved flipping a Huey and going back for a second look.
I passed a house that I’ve probably ridden past fifty times. It’s a pretty basic early 20th Century foursquare, with a rough-cut native limestone first floor and a second floor clad in clapboard siding, and a hipped roof featuring a dormer window. Like many such houses, it has a broad front porch with stairs flanked by short, lumpy, stone pillars.
Only this morning, I could have sworn that one of the pillars was actually a stone bullfrog holding a parasol.
So I had to double back and check it out.
Sadly, it was nothing so amusing.
There were two bowl-shaped flowerpots set on top of the pillar, and the bamboo holder for a Tiki torch leaned up alongside of it.
Sometimes, I like my world better.
On the bright side, there really is a super-cute bungalow house up in the Old Northeast that actually has a pair of concrete alligators for its stair rails. You may think I’m kidding, but I am so not!
I pretty much dedicated today to cleaning and organizing my sewing room, no mean task for a packrat who often uses said room as a dumping ground for stuff I don’t know what to do with.
I’d recently bought a few more of those Sterilite/Rubbermaid boxes with the clamp-on lids and decided that today was the day that I’d sort through my costumes and vintage clothes and get that stuff organized and put up, as well as sift through the cardboard boxes of ephemera and maybe cut down on some of the bulk.
Among the things unearthed, re-packed, and stowed away neatly today was my old cassette tape collection from highschool and my early college years. Loads of shitty music in there. A few gems, but a lot of totally embarrassing choices, ’cause that’s what being a teenager is about: listening to horrible music that will make you cringe at a later date. My collection wasn’t very big, as I never had any money, and lived out in the boondocks where exposure to new or non-mainstream music was pretty limited, but there was enough there to fill a boot box.
Among the treasure trove was a surprising buttload of Dream Theater. I was really, really into them for a while, circa 1994-6. I’d kind of forgotten how much I dug them back in the day, but as I re-stacked my tapes in date-released order, as I used to always do, it started to come back to me, the magical summer of ’95, and all of its awkward coming-of-age glory.
The summer of ’95 was the summer between my senior year of highschool and my freshman year of college. I was so excited at the prospect before me that I felt like a fizzy bottle of soda sparkling and bubbling all over the place.
I’d had pretty much shit luck with boys up to that point. I’d only had one boyfriend; a relationship which was handled terribly badly by both parties – go figure, we were both 15 at the time. I decided that ’95 would be the summer that I would make myself cool and savvy and desirable to boys.
Apparently involved in said endeavor was listening to hours and hours of nerd rock and reading every bit of classic science fiction I could lay hands on, riding my shitty old Huffy for 20 miles a day, and doing truly insane quantities of sit-ups. To put a perspective on things, at a point not much earlier in my unsuccessful boy-chasing career, I thought it would impress boys a lot because I could not only lay rubber out of first gear in my Volkswagen, but that I could also chirp ’em in 2nd and 3rd. Sadly, it didn’t seem to bring the boys to the yard. In retrospect, I suspect that my prowess in destructive driving may have cemented the local opinion that I wasn’t the type of girl who liked boys at all.
Anyway, during my nerdtastic 18th summer, I listened to Dream Theater a lot, on my Walkman, while sitting on the front steps in the hot sun with lemon juice in my hair, hoping to make it blonder. I’d just bask there, eyes closed, daydreaming and spacing out to lengthy, meandering, electrified, latter-day prog rock.
Not a bad way to while away the time waiting for college and (theoretical) excitement to begin.
New minifeature over here. I’ve decided that I can’t waste all of my brainfarts on Twitter or Facebook. Not when I’ve got a perfectly good blog to yammer on. So now, occasionally, I’ll post pairs of things that I have liked and disliked recently.
I like riding past a house at night that has the lights on, and one of the family’s cats is sitting in the window.
I don’t like when people use me as the butt of their insult humor. Not because “OMG U’R BEEIN’ MEEEEEEEEN TO MEEEEE” but more because I do a lot of self-deprecating humor so it’s more like “thanks for biting my lines, butthole”
Oh but he was! The trauma of his annual trip to the veterinarian for his vaccination boosters brought out Griswald’s inner Mr. Humphries (or Niles Crane, depending on your decade and side of the pond). His histrionics are impressive, if you don’t have to share the cab of a pickup with his yowling, howling, frenzied dramatics.
Griswald, in his traditional fine form, pissed himself while we were on the way to the vet’s office. We couldn’t have been even halfway there when the unfortunately familiar stench made itself known.
Minnie, in her own traditional form, was perfectly well behaved, only griping periodically, most likely about being confined in her carrier rather than about the car ride itself. Griswald, however, carried on as though he were being eviscerated. Very. Slowly. For as big of a pill as Minnie can be, she’s quite a ladylike pussy in the car.
Once we got to the vet’s office, Grizzo was just fine, though of course he took his siren wails back up for the ride home. The vet toweled Griz off a bit and mopped out the bottom of his crate, but I almost think that made the stink worse.
Of course, I decided I’d get clever on my way home and take the highway back. I drove on State Ave all the way there (about 50 blocks, I might add) and I’d driven back from the vet’s before on the highway (the last time I took Ruby in), so I figured it would be nice to get home that little bit faster.
Well, due to the frenzied caterwauling (and the fact that I really needed to pee, my own self) I was distracted and took a wrong turn. Not only that, but I didn’t realize how wrong until I found myself crossing the Riverside city limits.
I swore so vehemently that the cat even shut up for about 30 seconds. Found an exit, took it, and got going back the other way. I had to go almost all the way back to where I started, and ended up doing about 40 blocks on State Ave. anyway. To the sensation of a full bladder and the stench of a panicked, piss-soaked cat.
And so, of course, when we got home, I couldn’t just let the cat out of his crate and call it a day. Nooooo, I had to do the leftover dishes, clear out the sink and counter, fill up the sink with lukewarm water (with a splash of vinegar, to cut the pee smell), grab the cat by the scruff of his neck, and swish him around in the sink for a while. I kind of dunked him up and down and stirred the water with him, so as (I hoped) to rinse as much pee out of his fur as possible. I didn’t even bother soaping him or anything. Just make it as quick and relatively painless as possible. In five minutes tops, I was sopping him up with a big towel. He spent the rest of the afternoon hovering over a heat vent, ears held flat, licking himself vigorously.
But the upshot of the whole affair is that his fur is now more gloriously soft and fluffy than it’s been in ages. The vinegar rinse really brought out the body and shine, not that he cares especially.
Last Saturday, I got invited to an exorcism at a liquor store.
Well, the exorcism wasn’t at the liquor store; I was at the liquor store when the invitation was extended to me. The exorcism, supposedly, was to take place in this new church in an old warehouse in the West Bottoms.
It is a church whose exterior decoration consists of a vinyl banner, the artwork of which I mistook to be the promo for a tattoo parlor until I read the text, part of which features the ambiguously Orwellian slogan “Freedom is Waiting.”
So, I was waiting outside the liquor store, minding the bicycles while my friends were in getting some beer for later in the evening, when I was approached by two very strange kids. At first, I mistook them for Mormon Missionaries, as they had that wide-eyed, well-scrubbed, slightly-frenetic/slightly-dazed demeanor, but it was a boy and a girl, rather than two boys or two girls.
At first, they were just like, “hey, what’s up?” and I figured they were going to try to touch me for gas (beer) money, but instead, they made me an offer that was damn hard to refuse.
And before I carry on, I need to mention that both of them had pronounced and matching lisps. I don’t know why, but both of them thpoke about ath dithtinctly ath Thylvethter the Cat.
So this young couple were all like, “hey, whath going on?” and I was all like, “Not a lot, just babysitting the bikes while my friends are in the store.”
Weird Lispy Kids: “Cool, cool. Are you riding for thome cauthe?”
Me: “‘Cause it’s a nice afternoon’s all.”
WLK: “Yeth, it thure ith. Thay, if you’re free later on, you thould check out the thervithes at the new church down here. They’re pretty itenthe.”
Me: “Intense? How so?”
WLK: “They’re really powerful – thometimeth thome thcary thtuff happenth. Latht week, they actually performed an exorthithm. It wath like nothing I’ve ever theen before!”
At this point, I was of two minds:
1. Back away slowly, make no sudden moves.
2. Encourage the crazy people to make with the crazy for my personal amusement.
I’m sure you can guess which choice I made.
The Lispy Kids waxed enthusiastic about the strengths of their “pathtor,” on how strong he was in his faith, how much he believed in and preached from the Bible, and so on. They got pretty wound up at this point and decided that it was just too mean to keep all of this spiritual joy to themselves.
They invited me to the “thpethial thervithe” that was going on that evening, wherein heavy proceedings were promised.
I had to reply with a “regrets,” as we were beering up for Stupid Movie night. Also, I had serious doubts as to the entertainment prospects of sitting in on an exorcism as a Godless Infidel. Because I’m not a Believer, I expect my experience of the exorcism wouldn’t be nearly as powerful as that of the Lispy Kids.
I’m pretty sure I’d find myself sitting on a hard bench or chair, waiting for some windbag to get done sawing on about Jesus and shit before some delusional dillweed or perhaps a planned accomplice came up to the front and started acting all growly and thrashy as the preacher-man shook him around a bit and hollered out some “Spiritus Sanctus Klaatu Barata Nictu” mumbo-jumbo and threw the poor sod to the ground, apparently drained of all demonic force.
In short, I anticipated the experience to be exceptionally tedious and taxing all credulity.
After a two year gap from office-buttmonkeying, I can honestly say I’m very glad to be back.
I may be incredibly flippant about the kind of work I do, but I must say that I couldn’t be more pleased to be elbows-deep in printer guts, rasslin’ Excel into making attractive charts, and marching boxes of superannuated files down to the archive room.
I spent hours yesterday jackassing around with Excel, trying to replicate a presentation for which the template had been long lost. I haven’t quite got it yet, but I feel that I’m getting closer. And when I finally get it to go, by gosh and by golly I’m saving a copy for future use! It’s kind of a pain in the butt, but also kind of interesting. I’m learning and making something all at once, and that’s what I like to do.
That and be efficient. I’m still working on that one; there hasn’t been a fulltime office buttmonkey in there for probably on five years, and so files are stowed away willy-nilly, things are saved at random, or not at all. There will be a dozen drafts of a document, but the final copy? Was there ever one? So in the midst of whipping that mess into order, I’m called upon to retrieve files, make copies, create new documents, and sometimes, being at the mercy of resources that are hard-to-locate or might not even exist, I end up taking way longer to accomplish things than I’m anything like comfortable with.
But, I’ll get there, and I think this is going to be a pretty decent situation for all concerned.
It’s been nearly a month since I looked at an Internet form with a header that read “Adde New Post.” Okay, there’s no Olde Englishe “E“, that’s just a typo I decided to leave in because I’m entirely too easily amused.
To quote Jim Anchower from The Onion, “I know it’s been a long time since I rapped at ya, but I’ve barely had a chance to catch my breath these days.”
This past month has been mad, insane, crazy-go-nuts, but actually in a good way. I think I’m just gonna have to break it all down listy-style to make sure I don’t forget anything good.
1. Starting off in October, Joel and I went on vacation. We went to Lake Ouachita, and it was fantastic! We rode mountain bikes, read library books, and took pictures. Some evidence of that can be witnessed here.
The guy who owns the Hwy 27 Fishing Village has two cute dogs:
Rascal
and Ace.
The more funny-looking and disproportionate your dog is, the more likely I am going to find him/her completely, ridiculously adorable.
2. Most of the rest of October pretty much was business as usual…crappy call center job, Joel working weird hours, days getting shorter. Bleh.
3. Then, toward the end of October, a friend of a friend offered to forward my resume to an architect who needed an office manager. She forwarded, I was interviewed, he hired me, new job starts 11-8-2010.
4. But before that, we had planned a trip to visit my parents in Nebraska during the last weekend of the month. So we packed up to the Panhandle and visited my folks. Joel and Dad patched a hole in the kitchen ceiling, Mom and I dug up some volunteer asparagus which have been migrated to Kansas City and we all had a real nice time. Took the dog out to raise hell in the neighbor’s empty pasture again. She did. And how. She was in and out of the river about 17 times, rolled around on a dried cowpat, and generally acted like the wild animal she fondly believes herself to be. While we were up in NE, Joel, Dad, and I did some logistics figuring regarding getting the old VW toted back to KC., and I think this coming spring we’re going down there with a light bar and a ball hitch, and will be dragging the old car to KC, to a body shop. I’m pretty stoked about that.
5. This brings us up pretty close to now, which is my first weekend after a full week at my new job. I’m still getting the lay of the land there, so to speak. Trying to get to grips with my predecessors’ arcane filing “system” and come to an understanding with four antiquated and decrepit printers and a phone system straight out of 1980. I’ve been alternately feeling super efficient (“YEAH, I showed Excel who ain’t a chump”) and like a complete incompetent when I could not get the photocopier to do a two-sided copy. The printers love me, the photocopier hates me, and the e-mail system is still baffling me. But I think the office and I will come to an understanding, and sooner rather than later!
6. Oh, and in between visiting my parents and starting the new job, I managed to catch a particularly noisome, snot-ridden, hacking-fit cold. I’m still slightly under the weather but definitely on the mend. Last Saturday, I literally slept all day.
7. Oh, and somewhere in there, I made a great new jacket:
It’s Butterick B5232 “Option B” and it was super easy and came out exactly the way I had hoped it would. I made this of natural cotton canvas, lined with some acetate brocade that I have a crapload of. I wish I’d had more canvas to make a matching pair of bloomers and an overskirt. This jacket works well with modern clothes, too. I wore it to work the other day with a pair of corduroys and a v-neck knit top and it looked pretty sharp.
8. So, after my first day at the new job, Joel got a job offer at a shop much closer to home, guaranteed full-time, insurance, and a fixed, reliable working schedule. As much fun as the Trek store people have been to work with, the balance of a predictable schedule and a 2.5 mile commute won out.
9. He also bought a motor scooter, a Honda Ruckus (his is red). This is for trips that are too long to be conveniently bike-able, but not worth firing up the truck for. He’d been wanting one for ages; he claims to look like Dumb & Dumber while riding it.
I’ll have to shoot a video soon for comparison. It’s not quite as bad as Harry & Lloyd, but it is really a spectacular sight to see the entirety of Joel folded up and perched on the seat of the Ruckus.
So, that’s life around here. Two new jobs, a couple of road trips, some sewing stuff, and some silly pictures.
Maybe now that all that’s out of the way I’ll get back to blogging on something like a regular basis.
I’ve just bottled up exactly and precisely 50 standard 12-oz brown glass beer-bottles of what I can only hope is mead.
I’ve never made mead before, and I’ve only had it once, but on the strength of what I remember my old boss Jeanne’s mead having tasted like I decided to make some of my own. As I recall, it was basically a sparkling dry white wine with a slight honey flavor.
As I was bottling, I certainly got a serious whiff of white wine scent. Enough so that it was kind of off-putting. I’m not the biggest of wine fans; in fact it can truly be said that I find most wine, and especially dry reds to be akin to something you’d inflict upon someone in a batsu game
For clarification, there had been a quiz show going on and every girl who answered a question right added an unpleasant food to a blender and the girls who got all the answers wrong had to drink a horrible smoothie made out of the mishmash of weird foods.
Anyway, being as I’m definitely not a big wine fan, I’m currently a little bit apprehensive about the fact that I have 50 beer bottles of the stuff aging in the basement. According to my recipe book, it won’t be fit to drink until around New Year’s anyway, so there’s no real way to tell right now, plus also I might not be the best person to judge on it.
I sipped on the wee bit of the leftover mead that didn’t make it into the bottles (about four tablespoons worth) and I think it is going to be okay. There are no foul flavors that would indicate contamination, and it’s not noxiously sweet nor gaggingly sour, nor does it have that horrible sticky texture that puts me off reds so. I understand that is tannin and is supposedly a good thing, but I will have to take others’ words for it. I’m also informed that tea has tannin in it, and I honestly have no problem whatsoever with tea (in fact I really like it) so I’m not so sure I buy that story.
Anyway, I’ve made a crap-ton of mead, and I hope it doesn’t suck.
I’ve been having the devil of a time finding a “safe” place to park my bike at my current job. My first two parking spots were awkward and/or obstructive, so finally one of the secretaries secured permission for me to park my bike in a storage room (the one I now nap in during my lunch break). For the past 10 months, that’s been working out splendidly. I roll my bike in from the loading dock and park it against the wall behind some surplus ladders.
On the other end of the room were a pile of horrible old shitty bikes that had been left on buses and were never claimed by their original owners, either because the bikes were so awful as to be disposable, or because the original owners were to drunk to give a shit.
All of the abandoned bikes had tags banded to their handlebars identifying the bike itself, the bus it was left on, and the driver who turned it in.
Well, apparently there’s a driver who periodically takes the abandoned bikes and donates them to charity.
And today, apparently, he decided to take a load.
A load, which very nearly included MY ABSOLUTE FAVORITE BIKE which belongs to me and is definitely not shitty, abandoned, or up for grabs.
NOT ABANDONED, HANDS OFF, THIS MEANS YOU!
I went into the storage room to take my daily lunchtime nap and discovered that my bike (and the rest of them) weren’t there anymore. Predictably, I had a major cow, and tore around the building trying to track down who disposes of the abandoned property.
Eventually with the help of a different secretary than the one who gave me parking permission, I tracked down the bicycle-recycler’s van and recovered my favorite bike from within its confines. As it turns out, he wasn’t paying very close attention to whether the bikes were tagged or not. I’d though mine would be safe since it was parked across the room from the abandoned bikes, was obviously not a heap of shit, and did not have an ID tag on it, but you see what I got for assuming.
I’m not exactly ashamed to admit that during a couple of restroom breaks throughout the afternoon, I popped into the store-room and made sure it was still parked where it was supposed to be, behind the ladders.
It was.
Now, I have a laminated card that I can slip under the brake cable housing on the top tube which reads:
Employee’s Bike
Please do not take!!!!!
And yes, those are an insanity’s worth of exclamation marks. I want everyone to be aware of the kind of deranged loony they’re potentially messing with.
My favorite abandoned house in Kansas City is no more. It was demolished back in May. I’m kind of bummed. It was built in 1888.
On the other hand, my second-favorite abandoned house:
Is currently under rehabilitation, and it looks like whoever’s doing it is doing a nice job of it. I’m going back out with my camera on my next day off to document the improvements.
