phillies still alive!

dear chicago cubs, thank you for staying in the game and beating the astros even though you know you're not going to the playoffs. i confess: i didn't think you would do it. now please do it again tomorrow against clemens. your fond fan, Q

more inconsiderate people

new roommate update: as planned, monday night he came by with some of his stuff (computer, groceries) and to give me $100 for the last week of september and get the keys, so he could move the rest (and himself) in while i was at work tuesday evening. also as planned, he had his girlfriend with him, who was up from atlanta. she wanted to see the place while she was in town, he said. seemed reasonable. they didn't stay long, as she was scheduled to fly out tuesday morning at 7am. tuesday afternoon, 2pm, i hear a knock on the back door. it's the girlfriend. i'm tired, a little flustered because the biz phone's been ringing nonstop all day, and more than a little confused by her presence. she comes in and says "we" decided that he should look for corporate housing. and she's there to get his computer. HUH? the only question i could muster was, wasn't she supposed to fly back that morning? "yeah, my boss is NOT happy." so she hauls the stuff downstairs, which takes three trips, and in between, she told me a couple times that i was welcome to keep the hundred bucks, for "the delay." when she repeated it, i got the impression i was supposed to say "oh no, of course not, here, let me give you the check," but fuck that. all the time i spent cleaning, moving furniture, and rearranging the whole apartment was worth at least that much. best i can figure, given his silence on the matter-- no call, no email-- either she killed him & dumped the body in the river and was running off with his stuff, or she didn't approve of him living with me. not only am i disappointed at how it all went down, i'm a bit screwed, financially. i'd decided to stay in texas for two weeks (my brother's only staying 6 days) because i figured it would be easy to afford with a roommate covering half the rent. plus, part of the reason for getting a roomie in the first place was so someone would be here while i was gone, and now it's too late to work that out before i go unless someone i know happens to suddenly need a place to live in the next week. (oddly enough, a gal at the cafe may find herself in that situation this weekend, but it's highly unlikely.) so, if i'm not around much in the next week and a half, it's because i'm working way more than a woman with my love of leisure ever should.

baseball blahs

aww, baseball's almost over. :-( i just got all schmaltzed watching the wrigley ground crew sing in the stretch. that *almost* took my mind off of how pissed i am that none of the games i want to watch this last week of the season are being televised. at least all the playoff games will be on tv, though i'll be travelling/visiting family for all but the last of it. (they're all baseball fans, thank goodness.) i've been plotting to drive up to DC to catch the last nats game, v phillies, on sunday, but recent events have made it not too smart, financially, to take sunday off, if i could even get someone to cover it. plus, it would be depressing to go alone. (anybody wanna come with?)

rita rita bobita

my folks are safe so far. i had a bit of a scare saturday evening-- i'd told mom i'd call when i got home from work saturday night, but my insomnia made itself known friday night & i changed my schedule-- i knew i'd never make it to work, so i got the shift covered. when i woke up saturday evening at 7pm, she wasn't expecting my call, and i knew that, so i tried not to be paranoid when no one answered. miraculously, i'd gotten the answering machine, so i knew they still had power. (the guys whose cows my folks are currently boarding explained that they're on the good side of the grid by less than a mile.) later, i tried the cell phone, which i know doesn't get a signal at their house, but by then i was convinced they'd had to evacuate to a shelter, or worse, were at/en route to a hospital. alas, the cell went straight to voice mail. 4 hours later, after playing a hundred games of solitaire and watching an entire lifetime movie (???) to avoid cnn reports, i finally heard back. my parents are notoriously anti-technology (they got their first CD player 2 years ago solely because they couldn't find cassette tapes of their favorite music for sale anywhere), and it seems they just hadn't noticed the answering machine blinking. (dad carries the cell phone on his late-night, dark-country-road drive to work, just in case he hits a deer or whatnot-- he noticed my message when he finally turned the thing on.) it's raining like mad there, and likely will be for the next couple of days, but they aren't experiencing the flooding they expected. the power flickered constantly, enough that they unplugged their ridiculously large TV and the AC units, but so far hasn't gone out. the wind, though... some sort of drain blew off the house and took a piece of wall with it, which left a hole dangerously near the electrical box, so when i called they were out dealing with that. for a moment after she walked outside, mom thought the wind had blown chunks out of the siding, but upon closer inspection, it turns out that the wind had been so intense that it had plastered pieces of leaves and debris to the house with so much force that even the constant rain hadn't washed them off. other than that, all seems well for now. rita has thankfully not quite lived up to her billing, but she has still stalled somewhat over what is ridiculously called "ArkLaTex," which just barely includes my parent's home. here's hoping she gets her rainy ass out of town promptly and withers to mere mist. thank you all for your thoughts and prayers!

evac, continued

well, it turns out my extended family didn't really need to evacuate from the corpus christi area. my grandmother did make it safely to camp wood, and i think R&S near schulenburg are probably just getting rain. my parents, on the other hand... i'm worried about them. can't really sleep, knowing that my dad went to work tonight and will be driving home this morning right about the time the rain will be getting to their area. i've become quite mesmerized by watching the coverage. sometimes watching too much coverage is a bad idea, emotionally, but then again, knowledge is power, right? a couple of hours ago, cnn talked to the mayor of nacogdoches, who said that it was still clear there, which made me feel better about my dad's drive home, since he works an hour north of there. this is probably a minor concern, this drive, compared to the wind and flooding they're sure to get over the next few days, but it's weighing on me right now.

extreme pumpkins

somebody remind me in a month that i want to carve a pumpkin this year, eh? i'll have to get my mom's pumpkin pie recipe while i'm in texas.

evacuation

checked in on the status/location of most of my family... one of my aunts is "locked down" at the hospital in corpus (i mean: she works there), while her son is headed to san antonio and her husband is staying at the house, boarding it up. (if my recollection of family stories is accurate, that's the same house in which a giant plate glass window came flying in at my grandfather during Camille.) my dad's brother in corpus is staying at least til tomorrow, too, and his son, who works at a hotel on the island, was asked by his employer to stay as long as possible. (his boss has just shot to the tippy top of my list of people i'd like to punch in the neck.) my maternal grandparents, the snowbirds, are in the midwest right now, but their "home," a fifth wheel trailer that they usually take with them, is in robstown, and probably won't fare very well. my paternal grandmother is en route to her brother's house in camp wood-- or at least stuck in traffic heading out of corpus. could be worse, though-- at least they're not stuck in traffic in houston. no word yet on my mom's brother & his family in corpus; hopefully we'll hear by tonight. dad's brother near schulenburg and his family are staying put-- they can expect flooding at the very least, no matter where Rita hits. and my folks, up in NE texas, are solidly in the current projected path. so far their forecast is "only" ten inches of rain. it hasn't rained much at all there this summer, so anything they get will sit on top of the packed ground. my dad's been putting a new roof on this summer, and he's rushing to finish it today. hopefully he won't have to start all over on it next week. meanwhile, will someone please tell wolf blitzer that there is NO easy way to evacuate the entire city of houston without backing up the highway? even if you airlifted everyone out, you'd have the air equivalent of gridlock. there are millions upon millions of people there. it's going to be a little messy no matter how you go about it.

i have no idea what i'm doing. ever. about anything. that is all i have to say about my current mental state. by the way, anyone ever driven along the gulf coast of texas? remember all those ugly refineries? i highly recommend to anyone reading this that you turn off the computer and go fill up your gas tank. now. if that doesn't completely empty your wallet, come on back when you're done & send some more money to the red cross. or your church's relief fund. or go sign up for volunteer training. having said that, my fingers are crossed that we're over-planning for rita because of all the katrina embarrassment, because most of my extended family is in texas-- many in (coastal) corpus christi. my paternal grandmother, in particular, lives 3 miles from the bay. her 80th birthday is in a couple weeks, and i'll be down there to help her celebrate. assuming her house is still there. back to the world under my nose... i had a lovely weekend, with friends in town and much-needed socializing. sunday evening, dinner with old roomie & some richmond friends of hers, at empire, which my anti-social self had never even heard of prior. a wee too hipster for me, but exactly the right amount of dark & dingy. L came up from norfolk, and stayed here with me that night. in the morning we had breakfast at galaxy-- more hipster scene, but i love the horribly southern food there. our waiter at empire was a guy who worked for/with me at christie's, which used to be where galaxy is now. a reminder of my old life? maybe. later, after we wandered carytown for a spell, L left to get back to norfolk, and i "interviewed" a potential new temporary roommate. a couple nights ago, after yet another crappy shift at the cafe, i poked around craigslist & found his ad. seems a perfect fit-- he'll only be here during the week, for just a few months, he's a day person, a smoker, and he has a long-term girlfriend, who i'll meet on monday. and: on his way out, he asked what i was doing with the dining room space, and suggested that it would be a great place for a pool table! that's exactly what i planned on putting in there once roomie moved out, but i dismissed the idea quickly after considering expense and noise. the new guys downstairs probably wouldn't mind, but my new roomie might rethink the idea once he realizes i'd want to use it at 2am. we'll see. so i showed him the place, which he seemed to like, and we went out to the balcony to sit and talk, and just then, old roomie showed up with a former hottie boy toy of hers who came up from florida to see her while she's in richmond. she immediately went out to the balcony, introduced herself, and said she'd be conducting the interrogation. and she did! good thing, i guess, since i made the decision to let him move in based mostly on intuition-- i really don't care what company he's here working for, or where it is, but i suppose that's good information to have. i've always maintained that she was the best roommate i've ever had-- and not just because she didn't toss me out when i was 9 months behind on the rent-- but i never really knew how she felt about *me* as a roomie. she told him that when folks would ask her how it was living with me, she'd say that if she decided to plant an oak tree in the living room, i could be counted on to simply ask, "ok, where will it be and what should i move out of the way?" of course, my attitude was based mostly on the fact that i always thought of it as *her* apartment, whereas now it's *mine.* still, i'm pretty easy to get along with, as long as you stay the FUCK out of my way. ;-) late sunday night, P called. i'd just gotten into bed (as had L) and when i heard his distinctive ring, for the first time in six weeks or so, i thought perhaps i'd messed up when setting an alarm. but no, it was really him. seems he's a little stressed out & just wanted to talk to me. i listened, managed not to pull a juvenile "la la la i can't hear you" when he talked about his trip to philly, and he even asked me how i was doing (rare), and that was that. that, and he said he'd call later in the week, which he did, earlier today. no apparent reason. says he's stopped drinking (!!) and is planning to transfer to berea. in kentucky. huh? i'm happy for him that he's looking ahead with school (and the drinking, too-- that's huge). this time he mentioned stopping by the cafe to see me sometime... i have mixed feelings about that, but i'm not sure how to mention it. or whether i should. monday night after the interrogation, roomie & her boytoy and i had dinner at 3 monkeys. the food had a lot of potential, but didn't quite follow through. (i decided not to ask for no onions on my pizza because they were supposed to be caramelized. they came out barely cooked at all.) afterward, we went to shoot pool at the triple, which was fun for me, as i hadn't been there in months... okay, i just realized corpus is under mandatory evacuation. enough of this piffle.

boobies!

tonight i steal a notion from qwmaine and direct you all to boobiethon. all i've got to say: freakin' brilliant. and: i hereby vow to participate if either (a) someone comes on over with a digital camera to snap a decent (in all forms of the word, hello) pic of mine, OR (b) brainy blonde agrees to, um, do it with me. better yet: both. in the meantime, i'm inspired to post a pic in the spirit of the thing. it's got a boobie, and it was taken in new orleans. the snowman? long story. the hunchback of new orleans with frosty the snowman!

boots approacheth

this fall-like weather is well timed. maybe it's ophelia, that bitch, but i'll take what i can get. emotionally, i'm jumbled, messy, a danger to myself (no, not like that, put down the phone), and no good to anyone else. physically, i'm feeling october. fall for me is like summer for a lot of women. for them, summer is the time to show off, to wear strappy tank tops and tiny shorts, to flaunt it. i get that feeling as soon as the weather turns cool, when i get to break out all my boots, slip on some tights or fishnets, buy a bunch of new short skirts. monday i cut my hair & went back to red for the first time in several years, & even tried my hand at highlights. (it was my first time. the good news? no zebra stripes. the bad? not so much with the highlights. better luck with the touch up, i guess.) the risk this year is falling into the all dressed up & nowhere to go trap. the plan to avoid that is to keep up with the "work all september, travel all october" theory, though that's been moved back to "october after my hearing on the 7th." (the classic car rally isn't realistic, financially, plus i haven't suceeded in finding a mechanic. anyone available?) my lawyer swore the hearing wouldn't be later than september... eh, nothing to be done about it. bright side: one more week to make money. flip side: the travel adjustments will probably cost as much as i'll make that week, since i'll likely now have to fly into corpus and out of shreveport. i guess as long as the pros and cons keep balancing out, i can't complain too much. (yes i can. this will not fly.) just realized that if my texas trip works as planned, i'll be there during the division series games and the beginning of the AL/NLCS. con: there's no drinking for me in texas, usually, and beer+baseball=4. pro: i'll get to watch them with my dad.

across the pond

i don't know whether i'm more confused by the use of the word extraordinary or by the "having very little joy" comment... or the assumption that *I* park badly? hmph... but i came across my visage again tonight on the web. wacky. the rat & mouse's take on my blog makes me realize that i never post any of the fun stuff. to wit: mere moments after i last posted, i heard the familiar rumble of a harley pulling up on the sidewalk in front of my apartment. i had a feeling my biker boy obsession might finally come by that night, as i'd mailed him a going-away package the day before, but still i was not entirely prepared (i.e. breath-freshened & moisturized, etc, much less fully awake)... despite a severe case of sleep deprivation, i managed to keep my eyes open til he left sometime after sunrise. am hoping, of course, for a return visit before he leaves for katrina cleanup on wednesday, but i know he has much to deal with before then. by the time he gets back (in several weeks), i will likely be en route to texas, so it may be months between visits yet again. despite the fact that he is damn near perfect for me on paper, it's probably for the best. no need, in this case, to get to know him too well and break the spell. on tap for this week: only one cafe shift (which is fantastic news, as i threatened to quit earlier tonight, and i meant it), and so far it looks like light real estate work, though that may change with the winds. several of our rental prospects have passed board approval (pause for brief jig-dancing), which will contribute to the october travel fund. meanwhile, i must clean my apartment, pay someone to make my feet more amenable to putting in boy's laps, and continue with the boy history writing. off i go... p.s. just when i thought i'd heard the funniest black eyed peas joke, here comes dan tobin to prove me wrong.

words

comps are done, OH list is done, i haven't slept in two days (not because of those, just random psychoses and insomnia), and yet here i am awake. i still have a cushion of a few hours before i have to force myself to sleep to avoid job disaster tomorrow, so i'm reading lester bangs and listening to joe jackson. no wonder my brain can't accomplish the one thing it needs. the soco should take over soon and shut them all up, but in the meantime, i can't stop thinking about a recent post-coital conversation, and wondering why it's stuck in my head, above the more visceral memories that ordinarily would take precedent. i don't remember the specifics, just that we were talking about (and listening to) roxy music, and having a conversation that on my end was about bryan ferry, and on his was about brian eno. my use of the word "dandy" was the tip-off, as i recall, and at the time it was just amusing and a little carver-esque, but now that it keeps coming back, i'm reminded anew that there's something to be said for shared experience when it comes to coupling. don't misunderstand me-- i'd just met this guy a few hours prior; we weren't old friends. and it's not about age, and what decade we grew up in, because he and i were about ten years apart. sure, we can all create memories together, and sing along when wham or the cure comes on the radio (maybe), but those moments when one or the other spouts off some random thought triggered by a song or a smell or a date on the calendar, and the other person gets it-- those intersections make it possible to build on a moment and make it a memory, or at least turn plain old satisfaction into something closer to bliss. speaking of word usage and the joys of other people getting it... now that clay and i both have free nights & weekends, we've been talking more often, which i'm enjoying immensely. tonight we had an animated conversation on the finer points of the words "hysterical" and "hilarious," spurred on by his observation that the voice mail i left him upon seeing my horse on Curbed sounded hysterical, which he found hilarious. yup, we're both dorks. dorks with OEDs on our list of top ten belongings to rescue upon threat of fire, right behind our laptops and before our various collections of personal... stimuli. more about words: wrote a thousand or so on the boy history today, on the topic of the brain-stuck biker boy, but i can't post that either, because it's only a surface scratch, and, well, i'm still hopeful that the story hasn't yet reached its end in real time. this weekend i will take a stab at the summer of international boys, which tracked closer to a hurricane season than just a summer. the cubano, the brit, and that navy nutcase who insisted we all call him "frenchy"-- those are all stories i can safely share.

whoa, nelly!

after failing to get my blog to load this evening, i shrugged & moved on to catching up on curbed posts. double-takes ensued. remember back in the pre-digital days, when you'd sometimes get a roll of film back and find two pictures developed on top of one another? i assumed my browser had a similar meltdown, because there i was on curbed. huh? exciting, sure, but a little blush-worthy, here on the official billboard of the world directly under my nose. nice to be mentioned in the same sentence as stephanie klein during my 0.5 seconds of blog notice, to be sure, even if it's drowning in sarcastic syrup. for what it's worth, my "indeterminate" real estate job is as a research assistant for a boutique manhattan agency which shall remain nameless. i followed the parade and sat on the filthy ground at 5am to take the licensing exam with everyone else (and yes, i passed), but i'm a laid-back southern gal at heart. i prefer to sit on my balcony and watch yon bubble from down here.

freestyle parking

the next time i come home late and can't find a nearby parking spot, i think i'll just park in the middle of the street. tuesday night when i had that exact problem, and parked far enough away that i felt compelled to get a friend on the phone for the walk, so he could call 911 should anything untoward happen to me, there was a white sedan parked at the corner, right in the street. it's pulled near the curb, but there's no parking on that side of the street, so it leaves maybe two or three feet of room between it and the divider line. i sat out on the balcony for several hours that night, just waiting to see someone smash into it in the dark, after the bars closed. during those hours i watched as two different cop cars, no doubt coming from the robbery scene a block away at the chinese restaurant, pulled up behind it, shined their lights inside, walked around it, and drove away. i assumed a tow truck would be along shortly. now here it is, thursday evening, and yet another cop car is sitting behind it with his lights on. i think he just put a ticket on the windshield. i noticed when i came home today that the car has a flat tire, but that's no barrier to towing it. maybe it's just the universe poking at my sore spot, reminding me of south philly, where folks park anywhere they see a few feet of blacktop, courtesy and safety be damned. speaking of safety (and my psychological disfunctions), i am writing this outside, meaning the laptop has made only its third appearance on the balcony since the break-in. i've been paranoid about "inviting" my robbers to come back and get it, while i'm here... the first time i took it out, it was only briefly, around 4 am, after biker boy had been here, parked out front in his emergency vehicle, for several hours. he was gone by the time i brought it out, but his presence made me feel somehow safer (or at least braver). the second time, it was also super late (or early), and i was a little drunk. today is the first daylight appearance. yes, there's a cop sitting out front, but some of the shady lurky guys are also out on the corner. fingers crossed that i don't wake up to find it being carted out the window. i still have the "ringer" on the coffeetable, though i've gotten sloppy about hiding this one when i go to sleep. (still vigilant when i leave for more than an hour or so.) speaking of biker boy, just learned last night that he's being sent to new orleans, for what i assume is an indefinite time. yet another sign that it's time to find a new pseudo-obsession... and no, i am not so self-absorbed that my only frame of reference to katrina is that i'll be inconvenienced by the absence of some boy i barely know... i just absolutely cannot bring myself to write about it here. i know you're all doing what you can, and i applaud you and encourage you to continue, especially after the media finds something else to fixate on. remember after 9/11, when the "excitement" wore off, and people stopped donating blood and money? this is bigger. and worse. and will take longer to fix. believe that. and act on it.

work

got all excited (ahem) about writing the boy history, and now i'm inundated with post-holiday real estate work. bah humbug. hope i can come back to it very soon. lots to think/write about elsewise, though none of it will hold still in my jumbled brain long enough to focus, and i'm not sure how much of it belongs here. i asked for this extra real estate work-- i mean, i asked the universe for it, wishing for something to get me on a productive track so i wouldn't mope. and then i got my brain in gear without the work, and now i get the work anyway. ok, fine. i'll take it. but, universe? could i see some financial benefit from this work sometime soon? thanks.

words about boys count

i'm not quite ready to post any of it just yet, but i got some more done today on the history of my boys. managed to get up to the early part of the summer of '91 extravaganza, though i skipped over andrew, my first love, who i'll come back to later. 6,696 / 50,000 (13.0%) this is a FUN project!

NEW KATE!

holy crap-- my mood has (temporarily) lifted: kate bush is putting out a new album! new kate info!

depressing baseball facts

saw P tonight... i've wanted to spend time with him, just to reinforce that i do still want to be friends, but wasn't sure if either of us was ready. it's been, what three weeks now? a month? so i called him a few days ago, & we made plans to get together tonight, his "only free night," and see the new jarmusch movie, but i later realized tonight might be the last r-braves game i could catch, so i suggested that instead. now, i knew he was planning to go to philly this weekend and see a game, he'd told me his plans, and i hoped that he was going alone. last time we talked, he said he wasn't going after all, that he couldn't afford it, and knowing his dad, i figured he'd change his mind. another comment of his made me think he hadn't told his dad that we'd split up. alas. he mentioned that his dad has scored great seats, for this late in the season, and i asked if he'd found someone to drive him up, since he'd said he couldn't afford train tickets, and had mentioned that he couldn't afford to fix his car. and the answer was yes. and i can't stand it. i mean, i can handle the fact that he's fucking someone else-- that fact has never been the real issue-- but taking her to philly? to meet his dad, to sleep in anne's bed? in MY place? already? fuck. i almost told him i wanted to leave right then, in the third inning. i almost cried. i didn't, because i couldn't, but damn. i am sure going to miss south philly.