Fresh, Hot Wastes of Time

We went to a sort of a party, I guess, tonight, featuring denizens from the austin.general newsgroup. It was ultimately boring. I suppose it wouldn’t have been if I had known anyone there. The kids were big hits and even though they were the only kids there, everyone was very nice to them. Some semi-inebriated, semi-clothed (ok, she was clothed, but skimpily) woman gave J. a handful of makeup glitter. You can guess what the most sparkly family on the block is. Sometimes it’s really obvious who doesn’t have kids of their own. Another guy was there showing off his Segway. Someone took a demo ride on it and proved that it is indeed possible to fall off.

After an hour the brewery owners started to shoo us off, so we headed over to Carraba’s for a bite to eat whereupon C. immediately fell in Utter and Complete Love with our waitress, who she dubbed “Sunny-D” for some reason. Every time the waitress left, C. started howling “Sunny-D! Sunny-D! Wh’AH you?” at the top of her lungs. We had an excellent meal and for dessert I had a chocolate martini (equal parts vodka and creme de cacao, served in a martini class whose rim is dipped in chocolate sauce). Oh but damn, that was good. I’m very much looking forward to hitting martini bars in Las Vegas.

Luckily J. discovered the flyer for Mother’s Day sitting near the back of our booth and pointed it out to hub. Now he knows. I knew he’d forget unless someone clonked him over the head with it and I didn’t want to have to do it again this year.

I watched Donnie Darko again last night. Second time’s the charm. I can’t get the movie out of my head. Or the soundtrack.

Since we just unloaded a house payment and yearly property taxes, I think we may buy a boat. We have one out at a lake an hour away that’s co-owned with my brother’s family, but considering we’re 5 minutes from a public boat ramp, it’s silly not to have one here at the house.

Right?

The message board situation exists, I was one of the donors. The only acknowledgement has been a throwaway one-sentence line (like “I’m not being evicted now, thanks to some people here) in the midst of a longer post about other things.

I’m not asking anyone to bow down and lick my toes, but thank-you notes serve a dual purpose. First, they let the giver know that their gift arrived and was received, and isn’t just lost in the mail somewhere. Second, they express gratitude for the gift, which is just common etiquette.

This is the third (and probably last) time I’ve gotten “whatever”ed at when I tried to help someone out. It will affect my actions in the future. If it’s too much effort to drop a short email, then it’s too much effort for me to help you out. Since it seems to happen frequently, I feel that I just shouldn’t even bother.

For what it’s worth, every charitable donation I’ve made in the past year has netted one thank you note, and sometimes two.

We’re closing on the old house tomorrow, so we’ve been busy cleaning out the accumulated junk from the garage over there. There was stuff from storage, stuff from my grandmother’s house from when she died, stuff we threw in boxes and raced out there when the septic tank flooded the house, stuff we didn’t know what to do with, and so on and so forth. I found some interesting things like my mom’s charm bracelet, old scrapbooks and diaries, a $25 chip from The Mirage (you bet your bippy I’m using it as bet fodder for our upcoming trip), baskets and jars of change (ditto!)… we ended up filling up a huge dumpster with crap.

That was the first house I ever bought. We made two babies over there. I lived there for 4 years, through happy times and sad times. It’s the house we came home to live in after our honeymoon, and that my first daughter came home to from the hospital. Even though it’s been sitting vacant for nearly 2 years, the impending sale makes me a little misty.

But it will be nice to have the money!

A couple of weeks ago I got really mad and threw my mouse which careened off my LCD monitor and now I’ve got a bright spot in the middle of it.

Earlier today I ran to get the phone and my 12″ aluminum Powerbook fell off the table onto a corner and bent the case.

What shall I break tomorrow?

(I have the most godawful pain, right behind my sternum, that feels like someone’s taking my espohagus and wringing it and it’s making me whimper occasionally. I don’t think the beer brats are agreeing with me. Holy COW this hurts. Where’s gallstone pain located?)

I really miss Fiesta Week. Makes me sad. I’d post more but I’d get sadder.

Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me, happy birthday, my bloooooooooooooooooooooog, happy birthday to me.

Today’s the first anniversary of when I started this blog.

You know you’ve been reading too much Sue Grafton when you actually start craving peanut butter and pickle sandwiches. Honestly, they’re pretty good. Get whole-grain wheat bread, and use crunchy peanut butter and bread and butter pickles. They even make the pickles in the sandwich stackers.

We dropped the kids in Houston so we can clean out the garage at the old house. We’re supposed to close a week from today. I’m still sick. Not as bad as I was, but I still manage to sound like death eating a cookie.

We’re still up in the air about flying or driving to Las Vegas next month. Flying scares the crap out of us, but driving will get us into town exhausted (not to mention add 3 or so days onto our trip). Flying will cost us a total of about 10 hours total, and driving will be about 40. Flying will cost more, but driving puts stress on the car. Since we’re closing on the house, we can splurge on first class tickets.

Reading back what I wrote, it seems like I want to fly, doesn’t it?