implosion

When asked what I meant by imminent implosion, I described my various projects as balls orbiting my head, about to crash inward and crush me. At times that seems like a not-so-unpleasant end, as long as it's quick.

After a breakdown that lasted through yesterday afternoon until about noon today, I'm feeling washed clean of my neuroses and ready to pick a path along which to proceed. What that path might be will be determined by some serious thought time and the usual combination of fate and serendipity.

So if you see me picking up garbage along the highway in an orange jumpsuit next year...

hooo boy

So I got around to watching Gilmore Girls last night. It started out well--Rory and Paris getting what they wanted out of their respective relationships, just when they seemed to be sinking into the murky depths of short-term college romance. But by the end Rory had once again compromised her own judgment and therefore herself (although Paris and Jonathan seem fairly solid). You can see it in Lorelai's eyes. You can see it in Rory's breezy manner. Man, I've been there and it ain't pretty. That said, I can't wait for the eventual disintegration!

On the homefront, I'm fairly certain my vet gave my cat too large a dose of a vaccine because she is still tired, 48 hours later. She's eating and everything so I'm not overly worried, but I feel bad for her. I just hope it doesn't have any lasting effects.

people bad...animals good

The good ex asked if I planned to blog about watching Closer. "Nope," I replied. "I think everyone else has already seen it." I'll continue with that assumption and keep my unfavorable review to myself.

What I did want to talk about today is just how weird people are. Downright mean sometimes. Usually I write it off as "oh, s/he must be having a bad day/going through a divorce/death in the family/hangnail/stayed up late making a costume for a child" or whatever. Some folks, though, are grouchy, mean, even nasty on a more regular basis. Me, for instance. I do get a bit cranky around that time of the month, specifically the Sunday afternoon before and sometimes in the midst of. Sometimes it just comes off as acerbic wit and other times I have to make cookies as penance.

More than that, though, seems a bit excessive to me. I mean, if you're going to be mean to me, why bother? I can tell you that it's really not worth the effort, because at this point I don't really care. I've got enough other things to keep me occupied, like my adorable kitten, my crazy exes and that darned leak under my sink.

NOT sucked into a black hole

This past weekend I was supposed to meet up with someone at a tea place I hadn't been to before. I did what most people with a computer would do--I typed the name of the place and my city into google and came up with an address. I proceeded to the place, ordered, read my book and waited for about half an hour. By that time I'd scraped every little bit of ice cream from my bowl and decided to take off. Come Monday, I get to work and check my email, only to discover the girl I was supposed to meet thought I'd stood her up. We checked our times--yup, both there at the same time. Then we checked our locations. Turns out there are two places with the same name within half a mile of each other. She waited at one while I waited at the other.

Weird.

I was a little relieved because honestly I've been having some memory problems lately (see earlier post about a play) and I think I'm a bit young to be losing my mind completely. But then again, a group was supposed to come yesterday and I swear the woman said they'd be there at 1pm because they had another tour to take at 1:30. She swears she said they'd be here at 1:30 because they had another tour at 2.

Damn.

what does low key mean, anyway?

Such a great, low key weekend I had. The only downside to that is gearing up for the work week. I spent a lot of time reading (finally finished a newish Laurie King novel, Folly, also got into a Ted Rall book and Blankets), drinking coffee and lying on the grass by the Menil. Yesterday, the good ex and I spent a good long while sitting on the futon in the extra bedroom, aka the reading room, wolfing down our books and coffee.

Doesn't make for an exciting blog entry, but what are you gonna do?

these are days

For some reason I've always loved that line...
This has been one of those days when I was booked from 9am-3:30pm and had to eat lunch at 2pm during a meeting. Joyalous joy, I get to go home in an hour and a half and hang out with miss kitty.

I have a book waiting for me, drinks in the fridge, movies if I get bored and a walk I should take after the thunderstorm threat is over.

I love Fridays.

bye bye swingset

If you've been to my house, you've seen the cheery little swingset standing forlornly in the backyard. Wait, can it be cheerful and forlorn at the same time? Anyway, the former owners are finally coming over this weekend to take it to its new house. By all accounts, its owner is eagerly awaiting its arrival. That leaves a big space open in my yard where I had planned to plant a garden or something. Now that it's so late in the season (yes, I live practically in the tropics) I'm not sure if I'll get anything going this year but perhaps a winter garden would be fun. In the meantime, I need to figure out how to combat the clay in the soil and look around for anything that I can plant that won't immediately wilt and die. I've been saving my Teas gift certificate...

roaring drunk

As I've mentioned before, I'm impressed with the way Gilmore Girls has handled Rory's relationship with Logan. This week had her commiserating with her two gals over the men troubles each was experiencing, denying all the while that she was having any troubles accepting the idea that things were over with Logan. During the commiserating, all three got completely smashed on Miss Patty's punch and ended up doing something stupid. Lane went to confront the music store lady (sorry, forgot her name already--Sophie?) about the affair she appeared to be having with Zack; Paris was out on the street accosting passersby for change to call her boyfriend; Rory ended up at home, puking into the toilet and crying with her mom, saying "what did I do wrong?" and "why doesn't he like me anymore?"

We hear ya, kid, and we don't know.

harry potter and the ...z...zzzz..

I started to watch Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban last night but I fell asleep. After I'd been dozing for a bit the good ex called and we had a very befuddled conversation about yet another thing I said I might do but absolutely did not remember. I wonder sometimes if there's another person answering my phone, having conversations with my friends, living in my body when my mind has shut off. If so, I sure wish she'd start leaving me some notes.

me speaka su casa

I'm taking a conversational Spanish class right now. Well, not right this second, but for the next few weeks. It's a six week, non-intensive class. I've been to two classes so far and here are my impressions:

1. Native southerners have a very hard time with Spanish pronunciation. They continue to butcher anything starting with H and cannot get the vowel sounds right. Note: this is a generalization.

2. Our teacher is very funny. She could combine this class with stand-up comedy and it wouldn't be that much funnier.

3. There's a couple in the class and the woman is way better than the dude. Sort of feel sorry for the fellow.

It's fun to go and shout out Spanish for an hour and a half every week and shake my head over the fact that I cannot pronounce R's correctly, especially when they fall after a T or D. That's made up for by the fact that I know even more swears in Spanish than I did a few weeks ago.

new lady in my life

I finally decided to adopt a kitty and so went out in search of a boy, probably grey-striped fellow that I would name Dwight.

I came home with Annika, a tiny raccoon-like sprite of a lady cat. She's about a year and a half old and has already had a litter of kittens. In fact, she appears to be calling them but since they're not at my house, no one comes. My book doesn't mention this behavior so I'm hoping that the periodic very loud meowing will eventually stop.

She's very fluffy and friendly and likes to be petted. She's also warmed up to the feather-on-a-stick game. Let me know if you want to come over and visit but be careful at the door because she's not opposed to making a break for it.

geek fest 2005

Yesterday I went to Austin for a user's meeting. The product we all use is specifically for geeky researchers and their associated librarians. I always have a lot of fun at these things. I think I'm about out of patience for these conference-y events though. I'm finding myself very impatient and short with people and wanting to hole up in a small dark space for long periods of time.

It's also close to the end of the semester and in many ways I cannot wait for it to be over. I'm feeling like someone close to me ran me over with a truck then wrote about it and everyone laughed.

In happier news, my friend Jane gave me a bunch of bug fridge magnets. My fave is the honeybee but I can't wait to put the big buzzy fly up on my refrigerator at home.

time for tri-focals, gramps

Okay, now I know we're all getting older and it's not nice to be mean to or make fun of old people. However, they sometimes do such ridiculous things, just like teenagers, that you can't help it. For example, this morning I was getting gas. There are two lines of pumps so that there are four lines of cars. In the very middle, there's a narrow space between two rows that you could, theoretically, drive down. When there are cars on both sides there's not much room left and you'd better have a narrow car to fit down there.

Enter an older gentleman in a Ford Tempo. This is not a narrow car. This is a normal, mid-sized sedan trying to squeeze in between my normal, mid-sized sedan and a minivan. The guy sussed up the situation and decided to proceed, despite my head-shaking and arm-waving. He began to scrape the minivan, slowed down even more and continued to scrape against it until he'd passed and pulled into the spot ahead. Meanwhile, the woman driving the van comes out and is putting stuff in her van on the opposite side of the scrape. I go over to her and tell her what's happened. I then drive away before I get sucked into waiting around for the cops because I still have to get to the store and eat breakfast before work and I only have an hour. I know this was not the good citizen thing to do but it was pretty clear what had happened and no one was hurt and they weren't on the roadway.

When I pulled away the old guy was going about his business like he hadn't just caused $1000 worth of damage to his car and an innocent bystander's car.

party favors

One of my friends celebrated a birthday recently. She told me about a pinata one of our other pals made for her. Inside it was candy (duh) and airline size bottles of booze, aka "boyfriends". Now this set me to thinking. I could certainly steal this idea and have my own boozalicious pinata (cinco de mayo, anyone?) but there have got to be other fun themes. Here are a few:

Just got divorced/Breakup party: condoms, spermicidal jelly, antibiotics, breath spray, hair dye, airline size bottles of booze

Housewarming: many household items might break or hurt coming out of a pinata, so I'd stick with gift cards to Home Depot & Target, cloth napkins, airline size bottles of booze

Baby shower: ear plugs, tums, baby wipes, baby aspirin, airline size bottles of booze

tinfoil reception

They leave all sorts of fun things in hotel bathrooms. For example, you often find a little box with a plastic showercap inside. I came out of my friends' room with their cap on and then wore it to dinner. I didn't really look around while I was walking down the street but apparently we got a few snorts and giggles. Inside the restaurant it was really hot so I took it off and resumed my "normal" persona.

One of the fun things about hanging out with my sis is that we share our quirky sense of humor. I'd taken my brown fuzzy scarf with me to surprise her with it but was never in the room when she wasn't there. I was complaining about that so when I was out late she dug it out of my bag and put it inside my toiletry bag. After I got done laughing myself silly, I curled it up in the bathroom and put the shower cap on it. It looked remarkably like someone's head sitting on the back of the toilet.

There were a bunch of other sister humor moments that happened over the weekend, shared of course with our sister librarian team, including our discussions with Squeaky (a stuffed crow) over breakfast but perhaps I'll save them for later. Keep them wanting more, right Squeaky?

i'm a sinner

Saw Sin City last night with a group of pals. I really like seeing movies like that with a bunch of people so that we can discuss our impressions, what we enjoyed and hated, and of course share popcorn. I'm trying hard to cut down on my sodium consumption (blood pressure...rising...) so I didn't get any snacks. We did get some good talk in after the movie though, like how true to the novels the film was and how that made the dialogue rather stilted. I loved what they did with the color. In fact, I don't know the cinematic term for it but that's one of my favorite film color styles, with the silvery black and white infused with saturated color. I don't want to give any plot points away for anyone who's going to see the movie and hasn't read Miller's books so I'll just pass along my thumbs-up.

So I'm going away for a few days to hang with my sis and other colleagues at a conference. If I don't get a chance to blog from Minnesota, that'll be why.

shining pearls

I have a new dentist, hurray! I saw her this morning and she is 100% better than my old dentist. While I was at her office for a good two hours, no one left me sitting alone wondering if they'd forgotten me. They did all of the x-rays and cleaning and gum measuring and then the dentist came and told me how ratty my old fillings are. The hygientist put pics of them up on the tv screen and boy, those were the second worst pictures of my body I've ever seen. Then we came up with a plan for fixing everything and how I'm going to pay for it and work gets started at the end of the month.

Phew. I really hate going to the dentist but I think I finally found a good one.

crack of the bat

Ah, the yells of the fans, the smell of popcorn and peanuts and beer, the sun glinting off the gigantic Citgo sign in left field...yes, I saw my first Astro's game yesterday. I can't say "of the season" because the season doesn't begin officially until Tuesday, but we got tix to a pre-season exhibition game.

My boyfriend was playing third base, as usual. My old Mariner's boyfriend didn't get picked up by the Astros as I'd hoped, but the replacement center fielder, Tavaras (sp?) is shaping up to be a decent substitute. The Astros weren't in top form, but I wouldn't expect them to be playing all out before the official season. There were no risky plays. They also didn't do all of the normal in between innings things, but we were very close to the team who throws a ball to kids in the audience and then one of them tries to catch it when the kids throws it back--in a glove on her head. Visions of broken noses were dancing in my head...

All in all a good time and I look forward to more baseball to come.

unsent email

I almost sent this email earlier:

LC, wanna cp to the bbg? Holla!

But I wasn't sure if it was "holla" or "hollah".

sleep? who needs sleep?

So last night I went out to see Gris Gris, an awesome band that I love. Fans of the lead singer Greg Ashley may be pleased to hear that there's talk of the Mirrors getting back together this summer. Yay! I for one like the Mirrors sound better than GG but as long as Greg Ashley is out there making music I'm happy. Anyhoo, after the show we went to the after-party which mainly consisted of hipster guys shotgunning beers and arguing about music/recording/video equipment. I finally crawled into my bed a bit before 3:30 am and that 7:30 alarm went off way too soon. I had to get to work though because I was teaching a class for a group of kids from different countries who are taking classes to improve their English skills before they start college officially. I absolutely love these groups because the students are so interested in the library and to be honest they're way more grateful about the resources and services we offer than the average American student.

Now that's over and I am going to crawl through the rest of my day and then go home to sleep on my back porch. Happy weekend everybody!