florida

made it here in one piece, am relaxing, good times. figured i'd unload the house & nature pics now so i'll have an empty card for the weekend. presenting: celebration, florida. weird place, at least for those of us whose notion of an ideal community does not necessarily involve white picket fences and legislated lawn lengths...

something is wrong with the world when...

...i can take K-Y on the plane, but not toothpaste. or yogurt. (hi, stephen colbert.) oh, and if you were wondering about whether you can carry on that spare pair of contact lenses, you'll have to call TSA and listen to the interminable recording before being connecting to a real person (who will then ask your name, phone number, and flight information-- not that they'll use that info for anything, john or jane doe!), but if you want to know whether you can take your bubble bath, your transformer robot toy (?!?), or your spear gun, well, that information is spelled out very clearly on their website. because that's way more informative than whether i can carry items prescribed specifically to me in order to be able to read the instructions laid out by the security signs (at significant cost, given my lack of insurance, and the ineptitude of the first guy i paid) by a doctor. my chances of getting laid on this flight, given my available use of eyelash curlers but the ban on lip gloss, has been severly and unfairly curtailed. perhaps i should sue. that's the american way, no? i am not making any of this up: http://www.tsa.gov/travelers/airtravel/prohibited/permitted-prohibited-items.shtm (but i'm also really quite happy to obey. as long as i can carry on my spare contacts. and some orajel for my tooth. and the hydrocodone script for the pain in said tooth. and the antibiotics therein. and some eyedrops for when all of the above dries out my eyes. and a bottle of water to help hydrate me after all that.... oh wait... erf. luckily i already gave up-- read: drank-- the traveler of southern comfort i bought to ease the stress of the trip. don't be surprised if a hysterical stranded post shows up from JFK tomorrow...)

sleep... wait, not yet... zzzz

if all goes well (and it will, right? right??), in 24 hours i will be in florida. this means several things to me. #1) i should probably start packing sometime soon. #2) the 55 things on the to-do list for today were probably pretty important, and my lack of having done them will cause me to panic in the morning. #3) or to start panicking in the next half hour or so, which is right about when i will fall asleep. last night i had the brilliant idea that i'd stay up all night cleaning and packing, run all the errands at first light, then go to sleep in the early afternoon, thus ensuring that my recent schedule of waking up at 3pm does not cause me to miss my 2:30pm plane. what happened instead: a rough work shift last night left me (and the rest of the staff) exhausted, too tired even to look for a parking place that didn't involve the nose of my car jutting into the alley. i regularly see people speed down and into this alley, and if it had been a weekend night, i would never have risked it, but i figured i'd be up all night to keep an eye on it (and jot down the license plate # of anyone who hit it), so no worries. after eating dinner, i actually felt sleepy-- despite the fact that i'd been awake for less than nine hours-- so i thought "yeah sure, i'll lay down for a minute, no way in hell will i get any sleep, not now when i actually need it." i left the lights and TV blaring, and all the windows & balcony doors wide open. i've been known to sleep through smoke alarms, but generally i don't hit deep sleep until the three hour mark, and generally not at all when i'm stressed. inexplicably, i was dead to the world at midnight. 2am, i woke up, shocked, and thought this was a good thing, that the catnap would help my plight. then i remembered my car, sprinted to the balcony, saw that it was ok. phew. this morning i watched the local news and learned that there was a car accident mere feet from my window just after midnight. i saw the footage of the police cars & ambulance and thought, huh, that looks like my corner, but it couldn't be. i would've heard it. sure enough, i slept through all the racket. this does not bode well for my packing, nor my flight catching. wish me luck.

lazy ABCs

i'm supposed to be working, so instead here's an ABC meme sorta-swiped (and heavily edited) from bobbarker31: A - Available? theoretically. B – Bar? When in richmond on Sunday nights: the triple. C – Crush? I suppose I’m still a little mushy on the mostly-invisible EMT biker boy, but i sure could use a new one. D - Dead Pet's Name? gulliver, gabriel, george. E – Email? Mozilla thunderbird. F - Favorite Color? pale blue eyes. G - Good Time? now’s as good as any, no? H - Hair Color? brunettish. Sometimes auburn. I – Instrument? my voice. one of these days i'll learn to play my bass. "cowgirl in the sand," yo. J – Jewelry? I wear two rings always: a kokopelli from texas on my right hand and a simple hopi design from oregon on my left, both silver (I’m allergic to gold). yeah, there are stories about boys behind both. Most days I wear a spider necklace too. J – Joke? Here’s the first one I ever learned, in 4th grade: “what do you get when you cross a hooker with a leprechaun?” “a little green fucker ‘bout yea high.” believe it or not, that’s the least scandalous thing I remember about the 4th grade. not the most wholesome or enriching educational experience, some would say. L - Longest Car Ride? Continuous? If so, probably the two legs of many VA to TX trips. Otherwise, grass valley CA to LA to phoenix to santa fe to steamboat springs CO to kansas city, via a rental car that ended up costing three times as much as I paid for the car I left sitting at home. M - Movie Last Watched? Can’t recall-- either kinsey or team america: world police (again). N - Northern or Southern? Are we talking hemispheres? I’m a pollywog, so I wouldn’t really know. N – Name? depends who’s talking to me. Q & christine are my favorites, other than my given name. O - One Phobia? car trouble. P – is Pluto a planet? I’ll leave that to the scientists. Does the answer affect me in any way? I think not. Q - Quote: “the rider is the ghost that leads the body.” R - Reality TV Show: absolutely not. S - Store: ABC, Kroger, & the corner market do me fine. T - Time you woke up: 2:45pm, under duress. T - Time for bed: hopefully 5am, if sominex will work where tylenol PM didn’t. U - Under your bed: about a dozen pairs of shoes, and probably just as many dustbunnies. V - Vegetable you love/hate: not sure I can be said to “love” a vegetable, sadly, but among them, I eat peas & green beans most often. My GI hates peppers. W- Where are you traveling next? Orlando/celebration/ormond beach FL, in four days. X - X-Rated Porn: I recently bought my first (as opposed to watching my first—not even close—just never dropped the cash before)—pirates. Biggest budget ever, I hear, and apparently there’s enough plot that they even released an R-rated version. I haven’t watched it in entirety yet, but a quick scan or two reveals that the sex is still the same old. Ah well. Y - Yellow: um... i'm bored with this quiz, sorry. i got nothing. Z - ZZZZZ: pretty please!

you should see my nectarines!

it's really no secret that i am single. left to my own devices, i still heat up the leftover sausage after the bar, but if the TV comes on, it's not family guy but a sondheim musical that i wish to watch. one that i know every damn lyric to. and hey, i forgot joanna gleason was the baker's wife in this one. i knew there was a reason i loved her on sight as jordan on the west wing. when does that new sorkin show start, anyway? "you may know what you want, but to get what you want, better see that you keep what you have..."

TILT: Boots!

('things i love thursdays' swiped from weaker vessel) I can’t put my finger on when I fell in love with boots. the first pair I remember owning were brown leather lace-up flats, back in middle school. My dad had recently been to europe, where he said all the girls were wearing them, and that was good enough for me. I wore the soles out in a couple short years, then moved on to a black pair that were less “pretty” but more functional, meaning more excuses to wear them. I eventually had that pair resoled, but they were never quite the same. Perhaps I just took them to a bad cobbler (do they still call them that?), but since then I’ve never bothered resoling a single pair... Those black lace-ups could probably write a horrid, angsty teen novel (or afterschool special) about all the things they witnessed, but the pair I found to replace them would write the R-rated sequel. They became my all-time favorites. Simple, clunky, and the most comfortable shoes of any kind that I’d ever worn, they were made by Muro, with Goodyear technology (whatever that means) in the soles. They were not particularly attractive, according to fashion standards, but that didn’t stop me from wearing them to a friend’s wedding with a pale pink dress. (I added a black boa to the neckline of the dress in a silly attempt to tie the colors in, but alas...) These new loves had a buckle instead of laces to reflect my spiral into laziness, but were otherwise not much different than my previous pairs. When the sole of those puppies finally broke in half, I honestly wasn’t sure how I’d live without them. They were my go-to shoes. I’m not sure I owned anything else in the mid 90s that had closed toes. My “old faithfuls” took me across the country, up mountains, through torrents of water, and cushioned my feet through years of waiting tables. I was in the middle of a waitressing shift when they died. I tried superglue and a vise, but alas, they had reached retirement age. That was four years ago, and I’ve still not been able to part with them, despite their uselessness. I keep thinking one of these days I’ll find a pair just like them on ebay... In 1997 or so, I found their knee-high counterparts, same brand, at zipperhead in philadelphia. They only had one pair left, and it happened to be in my size. They were almost $200 and worth every penny. I still wear them today. I was in philly to see chris whitley and meet a new friend, and the boots were the cherry on top of one of the best trips ever. I was so enamored with them that despite the fact that I was travelling by train and already loaded down with luggage, I decided that I simply must save the box they came in. (knee-high boot boxes are necessarily bulky.) chris saw me carrying it around and accused me of being a bit obsessed with boots, and I defensively mumbled something about my love of boxes. Perhaps that was the moment when the boot love turned into something more. Around 2000, even before the “old faithfuls” died, I bought a pair of inferior knee-highs on ebay that are cosmetically very similar to the Muros, as a backup, but they sit lonely and unworn on the boot shelf. They’re just not the same. One of the best deals I ever got on a pair of boots were these tony lamas, which were less than $20 at a salvation army in richmond. They fit perfectly with socks and for some reason make me want to shoot pool. My most obnoxious pair also hail from philly, at a place called guacamole, across south street from zipperhead. I took a trip to new york with some of my favorite friends, and I fully intended to buy a new pair of boots while there, but I failed on that point (though the rest of the trip more than made up for that lack), so we stopped at south street on the drive home, and I found these leopard(?) print goofballs for about $35. I’ve only worn them a handful of times in the 8 years or so that I’ve owned them... one of those times was the birthday night that I picked up an NBA boy as my gift. Two pairs of shoes have earned peripheral space on the boot shelf. These oxfords, which are much more beautiful than the picture suggests, hail from trash & vaudeville in new york. On a trip with The Boy, we were looking for a pair of oxblood oxfords for him, but these were marked down from $125 to about $30, so he bought them for me. I’ve only worn them twice. They’re just not very comfortable. The other shoes on the shelf were also a gift from The Boy. My former roommate went to europe and brought me back a couple pairs of striped thigh high socks, so we went on a search to find shoes to go with them. I tried on dozens of variations on mary janes til we found these. next week: Boxes.

ouch

monday night i felt the twinges of a toothache. tuesday it got to the point where i was nearly snapping at rude customers, and since i've needed massive dental work for years and have been planning on dealing with it soon-ish (as soon as i have $$ for it), i made an emergency dentist appointment for today. $150+ later, he wants to *start* with $875 worth of extractions. i wasn't really sure whether my wisdom teeth were in or out-- i had so many teeth pulled as a teenager that i can't tell one from the other-- but apparently two of them are in and want to come out. plus, the tooth that had the root canal years ago that i never got a permanent cap for now needs to come out (there's $800+ down the toilet), and another one next to the upper wisdom tooth is apparently useless. seems there's a mild infection somewhere, which he gave me antibiotics for, and he wants to pull the four in a few days, at the end of the pill run, and *then* do a full evaluation to figure out what needs to be done with the teeth that are staying. now, first of all, i'm leaving a week from tomorrow for yet another indefinite period, most likely six weeks. second, i'm already broke before leaving, and i certainly don't have the $1050 it will cost to get to the end of the extraction/evaluation run. third, well, see "second." i KNOW i need to take care of all this, and i've wanted to-- it's on my "100 tasks" list-- but wanting does not make money grow. even if i could come up with it, if i got the teeth pulled tuesday, as he hoped, i wouldn't be able to comfortably get on a plane on wednesday. so i'm screwed, and i'll probably have toothaches for the next two or three or more months while i come up with all this money, which will be extra-impossible (??) since i won't be here to pick up cafe shifts. in the meantime, he gave me lorcet, which was probably a waste of money to fill, because historically hydrocodone does nothing for me, but i figured i'd give it a shot. wish me luck.

lazy, but motivated... musical monday

need a spur. leaving town again soonish, for what should prove to be more exciting trips than the last, but need to get back in the habit of writing while i'm still home with loads of free time. lazy, so i'll mine some memes. to start: musical monday, in which i list ten of my favorite musicians & answer some goofy questions about them. 1. chris whitley 2. ryan adams 3. rolling stones 4. elvis costello 5. patti smith 6. prince 7. nick cave 8. steve earle 9. marah 10. tom waits · What was the first song you ever heard by #6? hard to say... raspberry beret comes to mind, but ‘little red corvette’ makes more sense. I have no specific memory of my first prince song, which is a shame, but I do remember the first prince mix anyone made for me, and I remember a period before that when I used to listen to ‘kiss’ on headphones in my room over and over. and yes, i just admitted that in public. · What is your favorite album of #8? tie: train a’comin & I feel alright. There’s a part of me that knee-jerked ‘shut up and die like an aviator,’ but seriously. · What is your favorite lyric that #5 has sung? practically all of them. Every word of: paths that cross, dancing barefoot, spell, and wing. dead city didn’t do much for me til I saw her do it live in DC. Oh, and this: ”we worship the flaw... the mole on the belly of an exquisite whore.” · What’s your favorite song of #7? Babe, I’m on fire. relentless. · Is there a song of #3 that makes you sad? Wild horses. But sad in a mostly good, sentimental way. also, little T&A, in a not-as-good sentimental way, which bums me out because it’s such a fun, insipid song. · What is your favorite lyric that #2 has sung? well, I suppose if I can narrow patti down, I should be able to narrow ryan. Whole songs, at least... hard luck story, excuse me while i..., everything I do, lo-fi tennessee mountain angel, come pick me up, don’t wanna know why... “... that you’ll find me... that you’ll see me... that you’ll run and never tire.” · What is your favorite song by #9? tie: catfisherman & why independent record stores fail. · How did you get into #3? heard ‘em all my life, of course, but didn’t learn to love them til I met the artist formerly known as my husband. · What was the first song you heard by #1? kick the stones, on the second mix tape made for me by the aforementioned TAFKAMH. · How many times have you seen #9 live? none, sadly. One of these days... · What is a good memory you have concerning #2? the w’town shows at iota & trax... and the “end of the world” NYE ’99 show at the cat’s cradle, which was kind of a bust, being the only night I’ve ever been stood up in my life (hey, if you’re going to do something, might as well do it big) yet still turned out to be a good time. · What is your favorite song of #1? I forget you every day. One of my favorite song of anyone’s, ever.

pardon the interruption

fiddling with the template here... pardon any gross-out color combos & screwy layouts while i play. and if anyone checks their stats and it looks like i'm stalking every corner of your site, well, i suppose that's possible, but it might also mean that your blogness rocks and i'm looking at all your deliciousness and deciding what ideas to steal, er emulate. (mostly lookin' at you, weakervessel! hope you're having a blast on your trip.)