Warp speed...

Okay, so time is getting away from me. To a ridiculous degree. But in the past five days, i have moved every piece of furniture in my house, and vacuumed and dusted and scrubbed and re-organized, and thrown out, and donated and laundered, and well, i am tired. And my big sister (one of them) is in town. So I don't have time to talk. But my hous eis clean, and my laundry is too, and I have been to the farmer's market. And I have been drinking too much. And smoking as well.
I am having an excellent time. But no time to talk about it.
Thanks to J and E for the fucking AWESOME cobbler(and the hospitality, and the marmalade, and the plants). You know how I love the cherries. And the sheep are stupendous.
AJ and Amanda can TOTALLY borrow the truck.
It will make them feel Southern again.
It doesn't have an emergency brake. And it has some rust leftover from its Yankee upbringing. But Atlanta doesn't have hills, to my knowledge. I think they mowed them down with all of the vegetation.
Or maybe Sherman did it.
Who knows.
In any case, things are a bit hectic, but there will be plenty to share, when the time comes.
But for now, I must to friends and family...
XO

Spring Cleaning

Damn i can't believe it has been so long since I have posted. Spent the last 36 hours cleaning the house. The dogs are freshly shorn, carpets freshly steamed, and almost every scrap of laundry is finally done. you know, I never really think about how many band t-shirts I have until they are suddenly piled on a couch together. We really need to get rid of some of these. I found a couple that I not only haven't worn in the past year, but that advertise a band I can't even remember having seen. Sheesh...

Smirky Smirky

Customer to co-worker, 5:30 pm:
"You're an awesome bartender. I should tip you." He then walked off without leaving a tip. Co-worker rolls her eyes and mumbles
"God I hate that guy."

Me, to that same customer, 1:30 am:
"Do you want a beer?"
Him:
"I would love a beer, but I am totally broke...(garbled, as he is completely fucked up)."

Me:
"I should totally buy you a beer."

He looks up at me, hopeful but unsure if he heard me correctly. I immediately turn my back on him and make myself busy in another part of the bar.

To the uninitiated, this may seem like passive/aggressive bullshit from a snotty, snobby service industry worker bee. But really, I see myself as a teacher.

Listening to Great Lake Swimmers record Bodies and Minds for the umpteenth time this week. Really, I just can't seem to get enough. Luckily, my b.h. is similarly afflicted.

The roar of an action silences all the words
The cry of an accomplishment
Drowns the whimper of ten thousand words
And we live in our actions and our reactions

Now, for some action...

Bookish

Just updated the "Books I'm Reading" section over to your right there. How Dogs Think is the best book I have ever read about dogs. Thanks to my friend J for the recommendation (and to her mom, who lent it to her). If you have a dog, you really should read it. It explains the physiology behind what they do without going way the hell over your head. Well, I assume it won't go over your head, since it didn't go over mine and the last science class I took was Physics for poets back in college. Seriously, if you are a "dog person" you need this book.
Got a copy of Fair and Tender Ladies from my friend K. Started reading it the first time, put it aside somewhere in a rush to clean up my house, lost it, found it two weeks later, and have started it again. I can't read it when I am going to bed, because it is written in a style that is difficult for me to decipher when I am that tired. It is the story of two women who were pen pals for their whole lives, told in their letters, and the first part is written in the voice (is that the word? I never know "the word") of a young and uneducated girl, so the spelling and the language are kind of... well, annoying, quite honestly. But I assume that as the character ages, her writing will get easier to read, and I trust K to know a good story, so I am forging ahead. Slowly. I would write the author's name, but I just tried to find the book again and can't. Waiting for the b.h. to wake up from his nap ( how he is sleeping through car alarms and barking dogs I cannot fathom) so I can start flinging stuff around in the living room in search of it.
The Shakespeare book is killer. Absolutely fascinating. I love Shakespeare and have always wondered what all the controversy was about. Was the actor really the author? Well, now I know. This is a pretty convincing argument, as well as a well written and fascinating book. It is also taking me a long time to read because i am not a person who generally reads one book at a time, so I have it by the side of the bed and I get through a little more each week. And it's big.
I found the copy of Cuba Libre at a thrift sale recently. Have always wanted to read it. So far, so good. I love a history lesson mixed into good historical fiction. Since I have been sleeping so well this week, i have been reading very little, but so far so good.

Alarming

Not since I moved from the city several years ago have I been subjected to this particular annoyance. There is a golf tournament here in the local cuntry(sic) club, and in addition to increased traffic in our neighborhood, I am experiencing the joy of being serenaded by a chorus of car alarms.
I have always been puzzled by car alarms, since they are almost always used when the owner of the car is NOT EVEN CLOSE to being within earshot (not that they would know it was their car going off anyway, since most car alarms sound exactly alike). So yeah, I am a little annoyed. This has been going on for at least the two hours I have been home from work, and what really sucks is that this particular alarm is not going off continually, in which case it might eventually fade into the background and I would at least have hope that the jackass who owns said vehicle might come back to a dead battery. No, this one goes off for five or six minutes straight, then stops for a minute or so, and then goes off for another five or six minutes. Keep in mind that I have two dogs that have never lived in the city and are not familiar with car alarms. Also, since dogs have fairly short-term memory in these matters, they freak out every time the f*&@ing thing starts. I am actually looking forward to going back to work.
Speaking of work, we seem to have adopted a local cokehead who recently learned was banned form at least two other bars in town. Fabulous. And there is another who seems to be slinking around again as well. Funny how these folks always know each other. Funny too, that I can always spot them from a mile away. Ah the service industry...

Down in the dump...

Today we finally cleaned out under our deck and around the yard (by "we" I mean my b.h.). I slept in and then pretty much just got up and drove to the dump. We have only recently aquired a truck (thanks to our friend J), and I had never been out there before. Two things struck me about it:

1. We could never have done this without the truck. No matter how much crap you can pack into your car, or even a van, there is no way I would want to go over that particular terrain in anything but a pickup.

2. Anybody who thinks that their recycling is actually being recycled in the greater Athens area is sadly mistaken. Separate if you wish. Wash out all your bottles and cans and put them in a separate container from the neatly collapsed and carefully folded cardboard boxes if it makes you feel better, but all that shit is going to the same place, where it will be flattened out and buried by another layer of red clay, mingled with abandoned toys and banana peels and piles of rotting, oozing whatnots. If you really want to make a difference, try consuming less.

I'm totally gonna do it with Cedric Diggory...

http://quizfarm.com/quizlist.php

Fun stuff. Thank you, Snowball!

Mass Poultricide

Lately I have noticed an alarming number of chicken corpses on the side of the road. I am certain that they are coming out of trucks en route to the poultry plant on the other side of town, and therefore I can't really blame them.

With friends like these...

Finally got photos back from our vacation to California. May post more later, but for now I just have to get this one up there. It's my favorite. This is my hand, doing a pseudo-shake with an anemone. It's really neat, because they reach out and kind of grab you when you get close. But not in a threatening way. It's sort of like a sticky little hug.

"I'll have your finest lobster, stuffed with your second finest lobster..."

So I was just out feeding the wildlife (today it was turtles, fish and a goose), and I saw a large mouth bass eat one of the brim. It looked so weird, floating there with a tail sticking out of his over-sized head.

He probably wasn't a math major...

Customer: "How much is a Bud Light?"
Me: "Two-fifty."
Customer: Can I get two of those for four dollars?"
Me: "Um...no."

I love when people come right out and tell me that they have no intention of tipping me and that they expect some sort of special discount. Please note that this guy was not a regular customer. In fact, I had never seen him before in my life. With any luck, I never will again either.

And I thought spinners were dumb...

Not only are the testicles frightening, but the stickers are- well, they're exactly the kind you would expect to find on a pickup truck with balls. "Preserve Our Heritage!!" shouts the ribbon shaped one. Another just says "R-O-D-E-O". My favorite? "Back Off City Boy." But my question is this: Doesn't the size of your stupid, gas-guzzling truck, with it's blah blah blah horsepower and two (yes, TWO) gas tanks (which is obviously the practical vehicle for making a quick run to the State Park with the kids for an afternoon of hiking and swimming) already say enough about "having balls"? I just don't get it. And I am starting to see them on more and more trucks.
It was driven by an imposing woman who looked weathered, but possibly in her 30's. She had three young boys in tow, and a 100 cigarette (unless they make 1000's--this thing was big) hanging out of her mouth and she was not happy. Sure glad I managed to snap the photo without being seen.

Gotta Run...

Would love to talk, but it is an incredibly beautiful day, and therefore I must take the dogs to the park...

Beautiful Dangerous Idiocy...

For some reason, people realy hate it when I try to take pictures while driving. And I'm like
"Hey motherfucker, you're not even in my car, so what the fuck do you care? And have you seen those fucking clouds over there?"

I am fully aware, of course, that these people are right But you really had to see these clouds. And since I am sometimes a dangerous idiot, now you can. They looked like mountains in the distance. Fluffy, pink, mashed-potato mountains. The pictures are fuzzy. The camera is old. (But it was free- and so am I.)

My hypocrisy knows no bounds...

It's funny how annoyed I get when there are sports on television, but it's even funnier when there's a UFC fight on and I won't stop yelling at the TV myself. I was seriously so distracted watching Stephan Bonner's fight the other night that I couldn't maintain eye contact with customers as they ordered. Fortunately, most of them were guys, and they seem to find a woman more attractive when she's screaming "KICK HIS ASS!!" My better half either didn't find it appealing or got tired of doing all the work, because he turned it off before the reality show got started. Can't wait for the PPV next week.

I just like the word "Proto-wrist"

Fossil Called Missing Link From Sea to Land Animals - New York Times

Rock vs. Geese

I just read in a magazine about how some researchers in Germany found that persistent loud noise can be a major contributor to heart attacks. The example given by the doctor who was asked was that of "city noise" outside one's apartment window, and that regular exposure to levels of even 65 to 75 decibels (normal talking is 60 decibels) increased the risk of heart attack in men by fifty percent, while in women it increased the risk THREE HUNDRED PERCENT. Consequently, I wonder:
-Do my fifty cent foam earplugs really help at all?
-Does the fact that I do not live in an apartment and that I have almost no city noise balance out my "rock time" enough, or should I go ahead and shoot the geese that live in my yard and wake me every single day?

It's just that they're so bloody cute...

Bah! No time!

So I thought i might write something a little longer today. You know, something interesting, or meaningful, but then I ended up getting like 80 cases of beer and liquor in today, as well as having to shop at Sam's Club *shudder* for bar supplies. Then i got back here and an editor had sent back a piece I turned in with some changes that ended up taking me far too long to deal with. So now I have, like thirty minutes to eat and "relax" before jetting off to work again. *sigh*
Oh well, tomorrow is another day...

Man, I forgot how exhausting puppies can be. Today the man and I are "Bobbysitting." That is, we have a four-legged overnight guest, one that has more energy than both of us and our two dogs combined. Needless to say I have had very little sleep and have spent a lot of time repeating Bob's name and several basic commands. Loudly. I don't know how people ever deal with children.

I have resisted the urge to do this blogging thing forever and ever. But today I located a bunch of old journals, and they were really hilarious (usually when they weren't supposed to be), and so much fun to read, and I haven't kept one forever- so here I am. I hope that this will force me to write every day. That has been on my Unofficial New Year's Resolution list for about seven years running, but since I am too lazy to actually write a New year's resolution list, it has been incredibly easy to ignore said list.
That said, Spring has sprung here in my neck of the North Georgia woods, and with it my desire to do something. Anything. I credit (or blame, as it were) the people listed on the right (I think it will be on the right, but I guess I have yet to get that far in the setup phase, so we'll see) with inspiring me to get my proverbial shit together and get going. Some of them are my good friends, and some of them don't even know I'm here. I guess that's the beauty of the internet...