Monday Morons--I'm going to be nice today

I'm going to put off that other thing yet again. I promise that I will get to it, just not today. Trying to address everything that I can remember being mentioned. Thoroughness takes time, and I have other things to do right now. It is the last regular week of classes this semester, and my husband is home this week.

And before I forget, welcome to my new readers, including everyone's favorite hairy nurse.

So for today I will talk a bit more about the car situation. This isn't quite a retraction from the earlier post. http://insidioustruth.blogspot.com/2007/04/monday-moron-mechanics.html I still think that the world would be a much better place if people would just be honest and tell you that you are not their main priority and they can't get to your problem until later, maybe much later, and you might have to come back later or just go somewhere else entirely. But I will say that I'm liking the people at the car repair place a bit better this week.

So every once in a while my car doesn't start. Usually, if I take a deep breath, count to ten, make sure that I haven't left the lights on, make sure to to turn off the AC or the heater or whatever, then right after that the car does start. Sometimes I go away for five minutes or so and then the car will start. Once in a great while it just doesn't want to play nice and I go away for like an hour and then it will start. Once or twice this past year I couldn't get it to start at all and then when I would call someone for help it would make a miraculous recovery.

Wednesday afternoon, after doing all of the usual stuff, it just wouldn't start. Since I was in a shopping center, I tried going shopping for about an hour. The car still didn't start. Okay, so this is like one of those emergencies that I got an emergency cell phone for.

The cell phone was missing. I must have left it on the charger and I left the house too sleepy to notice I didn't have it. Great.

So some nice people at Office Max let me use their phone to call the auto club. I got a recording. Press one for English, etc.... Okay, a few minutes later, I'm talking to a real person who asks for my name and could I please repeat my membership number.

I'm sorry, that account was closed in December of 2006 for lack of payment.

Okay, I don't feel like arguing about it. Since I didn't personally write that check, I can't swear that's a lie. I just want to go home. The car can wait, and school can wait, and all the other stuff I meant to do can wait. I'm tired now. I call my mom for a ride home.

Mom doesn't just jump in the car and come get me. For some reason she has a bunch of questions. She doesn't know any more about cars than I do. What is the point of the questions? Does she really need to know exactly what the problem is for her to give me a ride home?

Is that all you need? A ride home?

Well, the car probably just needs a jump. Maybe we could figure out how to do that.

Trying to do stuff like that when you don't know what you're doing is dangerous. I don't want to do that.

I thought so. Just a ride home will be fine. I can probably get someone else to help me out with it later.

Okay.

I wait for her to come give me a ride. She lives a bit closer to the place than I do, but somehow it takes her longer to get there than I expect. Since the last time I had trouble with the car it started just as soon as someone can to help, I try the car again. No luck.

Why don't we call your brother and see if he knows what might be wrong with the car.

Okay.

My mom and my brother have a discussion about the car. He doesn't even talk to me about it. Mom keeps coming back to "but we might have to get it towed anyway. So maybe we should just go ahead and pay someone to tow it now."

I don't want to pay for someone to tow it now. I'm almost certain that I have already paid for such things to be taken care of, and I'd rather just go home and find out why the motor club claims that the account was canceled due to lack of payment and maybe have it towed somewhere tomorrow. I'm just really tired right now. I've been stuck here for more than two hours and I just want to go home.

But before I do that I should probably stop at school and clean up the work area so that someone else can use it. Since I won't be able to use the space during the evening class I should at least move my stuff out of the way so that someone else can use it.

The idea of making a detour to the college seems to totally confuse my mother. Like she forgot I was taking a college class. She's told me often enough that I'm wasting my time with it. But when I mentioned it Wednesday she didn't seem to know what I was talking about. But, she didn't want me to be rude, so she did make the detour to the school so I could put my things away.

I got home just in time to have a soda right before my brother called to tell me he could drive me back to Arlington and have a look at the car. I haven't had time to call the auto club and find out about this cancelled account business, but I'm almost certain that it just needs a jump and that my brother can handle it faster than the auto club people anyway.

So back to Arlington we go. I don't have any jumper cables, but that is something that I should probably buy anyway, and the car was nice enough to get stuck in the shopping center next to a place that sells them. But after we try the jumper cables, the car still doesn't start. Some gizmo of Dad's says that the battery and the alternator are in fair to good condition. So maybe it's the starter. Seems like I just got a new starter like maybe a year ago, but I can't really remember.

Never mind. My brother is nice enough to take me back to school where I talk to the professor and tell him about the car and that I don't know how long it will take to get it fixed and all of that. So I wrap up one of my projects and take it home. I can't do that much with it at home, but working on it a bit at home is better than not getting to work on it at all.

So the next day after calling my husband and looking at the auto club card and emptying my wallet and finding another auto club card, we figure out that he has yet a third auto club card. They are all from the same company, but they all have different membership numbers and different emergency service numbers. Apparently the card I tried to use had been "cancelled" when my husband cancelled a certain credit card and got a new one. So I got the third auto club number from him and called the auto club back and got a recording saying that the account was paid until March of 2008. That's what I thought.

I called my mom and we went back to Arlington. I had my phone with me this time. She offered to let me use hers, but no, this is what I have the emergency phone for, and I really never use it, and I should make sure that it actually works once in a while.

Twenty minutes later, after talking to both the auto repair place and someone at the auto club, my mom and I are waiting for a tow truck. It's probably going to be an hour, and I had planned to buy my mom lunch while we were waiting, but we are not supposed to leave the car. She says that she just wants something like a hot dog anyway, so maybe she could go get one and come back. But mom is in luck, cause there's a guy with a hot dog stand in front of the Home Depot.

The tow truck guy is a little early, and I don't quite finish my lunch. My mom and I were talking, and for a moment we forgot we were supposed to be watching for the tow truck. Oh, look, there it is.

The tow truck guy came a bit earlier than expected, because the car at his last stop made a miraculous recovery as soon as he arrived.

So he fills out a form that asks for every number that is anywhere on my car. Then he puts the car in neutral and moves the car to a better spot in relation to his truck. I could have helped him with that if I'd realized that he couldn't get the truck close enough to the car where it was. But he seemed used to doing stuff like that all by himself. Then he lifts up the car and puts lights on it and all that stuff and takes it away.

I go around with Mom for a bit to run some errands.

After I get home someone from the auto repair place calls and says that it does just appear to be the starter, and they've looked and found out that I just had that replaced in June. So since the starter has a 12 month warranty, there will not be any charge for fixing the starter and I can have my car back Friday morning if they don't finish with it by 6pm on Thursday.

Great. I might even get my car in time to go to Friday's ceramic class.

No such luck. No one calls. After lunch on Friday I call them, and they tell me the car is ready for me to come and pick it up.

So that afternoon my mother gives me a ride to the auto repair place. The guy who must be the new manager comes out to meet me and explains that he's the one I talked to on the phone. After looking at the paperwork a second time, it looks like the starter was replaced in June of 2005, and is no longer under warranty.

But since he'd already told me over the phone that there would be no charge, they went ahead and fixed it for free anyway.

Okay. Liking the auto repair people a lot better now.

There is still stuff wrong with the car, cause I didn't get all of the suggested repairs last time. And now I think maybe car needs new shock-absorbers. But I don't have the money and I'm pretty sure that all of that can wait til I get a job or something.


And just in case you haven't had enough morons for Monday, here's some links to some really silly stuff.

The llama song:
http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/llama.php

The Sawyer song (LOST):
http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/sawyer.php

The Dalek song (Dr. Who):
http://artistic-insanity.net/song/daleksong.html

Ganectic

I totally forgot that it was greet everyone with a nonsense word. So I'll do that now.

Ganectic.

Okay, so it's not totally a nonsense word, but probably only two of my readers will recognize it. And I've probably misspelled it too.

And I'm still wearing the pumpkin T-shirt from yesterday, so I guess that it's still Halloween in April.

Favorite Eating Places

I've been tagged by Dmarks, so I'm supposed to describe my five favorite restaurants.

Like a person could really narrow it down to five. Please. Maybe five categories. Or five kinds of food.


Let's see. A long time ago, in a town about 125 miles away, there used to be a Mexican food place called El Babos. I have no idea if I even spelled that right. It was probably the only Mexican restaurant that I went to as a kid. I like all kinds of Mexican food now, but nothing is quite as good as the memory of this place. The tacos had red shells. There were other kinds of tacos there, but the ones we ate were red. Mom used to order the guacamole there, and back then I did not eat guacamole, it just looked too weird. There was something else that we used to order there, but I don't even know what the thing was called. It was spherical and orange, probably a breaded and fried thing. It had a bunch of stuff inside held together with cheese, and there was another piece of cheese on top of the thing. I don't know what it was and I have never seen anything like it since. The restaurant was in Wichita Falls, and we moved away when I was eleven. The restaurant closed either in the late seventies or maybe the mid-eighties. There is still a Mexican restaurant in that building, but it isn't the same.

The Mexican food in New Mexico usually seems just a little different than the stuff in Texas. We like a place in the Mesilla area of Los Cruses. A place called La Posta has a room full of parrots. I think the place is closed on Mondays, and it seems like half the time we drive through the area it is on a Monday and we don't get to go.

Probably our favorite local Mexican place is Campo Verde in Arlington. It is filled with Christmas lights and has a miniature train up near the ceiling. Like most Mexican places, they serve chips and salsa, but they also serve queso and the chips have chili powder on them. I used to really not like beans, but they have a black bean soup with cilantro that I tried to copy. Someday when I have money I'm going to try the rattlesnake fajitas.

We might have a new favorite Mexican place now. We just discovered Abuello's last week. My husband really liked a soup he tried with lime and chicken. The regular salsa was excellent, and they also had a habanero salsa.



Also a long time ago in Wichita Falls was Fido's Pizza. It wasn't my favorite place at the time, cause the other kids went to Shakey's Pizza, but after we moved away I really missed it. The sausage pizza was covered with fennel seeds. I just thought that was what everyone did to sausage pizza, but I haven't seen that anywhere else. Once a great while I make it myself that way, but that really isn't the same either.

Speaking of pizza, we have been to Mystic Pizza twice. Like in the movie Mystic Pizza, in Mystic Connecticut. You wouldn't think that two people from Texas would end up at the same east coast pizza place two years in a row, but it somehow worked out that way. We had a basic pepperoni and sausage and everything on it usual kind of pizza one trip, and the next trip we had a weird seafood pizza. Both were good.

My husband really liked a pizza place in Omaha called Mi Casa or something like that, but I wasn't that impressed with it. I thought it was a lot like the pizza in box kits that we used to make.

Our favorite local pizza now is the white pizza at Pizza Sarajevo. I think that is in Carrollton, or maybe Addison. I had no idea why it is named that or if the owner is from there or if Sarajevo is known for it's pizza or what. We don't live near the place, but we used to get pizza there sometimes when my husband worked near there.


When we first started dating again, my husband and I liked a Chinese place called Jimmy Dips. It was our special place for a while. We were married for almost a year before my parents met his mom, and that was the place we took them. The place is closed now. I think it had something to do with widening the freeway or something. My husband once asked for sweet and sour pork to be made extra spicy. The lady taking our order corrected him, and said "sweet and sour pork is sweet and sour," but she brought him a side of chili sauce anyway. That's still one of our little jokes.

To be honest, almost any place with the words Chinese Buffet in the title has been my favorite restaurant at some point. Once we were going to eat at the place mentioned in the song Werewolves of London, but once we got there it either looked expensive or crowded, and we ended up eating in the basement next door. I have no idea what the name of the place was. Most of the stuff in the area had similar names to the place in the song, so if you didn't say the name carefully it sounded like you said something nasty.


I like just about any seafood place in Maine. Maine gets a bit weird with the lobsters. Every place seems to sell lobsters. In the summer you can get lobster rolls at McDonald's, but those probably aren't the best. Everything seemed to be "and lobsters" or "and seafood" in combination with other things that did not make sense. Like there was some tire place "and lobsters." People sell lobsters from pickup trucks in parks and on the side of the road.

There was someplace in Bar Harbor where we got a good lobster dinner for less than fifteen dollars. I don't remember the name of the restaurant, just that it was a short walk from most of the tourist stuff we were doing. I think it's called a shoreman's dinner if you have steamed lobster, steamed clams, corn on the cob, red potatoes, and blueberry pie. If you eat the same meal on the beach, it is called a clam bake. We didn't go on a clam bake because it cost like three times as much, and we probably would have gotten sick on the boat ride back.


My favorite barbecue place is K.C. Masterpiece in Kansas City. My husband and most people who really like barbecue places will disagree and vote for someplace where someone yells at you and then serves you nothing but meat and bread on some brown paper. Not me. I like a nice restaurant where they serve lighter things with the meat, like maybe a salad. Try to go at lunch, cause after that it gets real expensive.


I should probably stop now. Maybe I should tag David in D.C. We went on a tour of DC once, and they let us out in Georgetown for lunch, but the electricity had temporarily gone out in a lot of places and we just ended up at Uno's Pizza. David can tell us what we missed out on.

What do you think? Anyone else want to play?

Something Else I learned on Saturday

Okay, so a while back I spent spring break with my husband who went on a business trip near a lake. I had really been looking forward to the trip, but the week before had been difficult, and I really didn't feel like going. But I went anyway, because I just knew I'd feel awful if I didn't go and it upset him. So I went out of town instead of dealing with some stuff around here that I've been putting off. And I missed two sci-fi conventions, and my friends really had a blast at one of them.

So I just learned something Saturday that makes me glad that I didn't go. Someone I hadn't seen for years was at the convention, and while it would have been nice to see him, that just wouldn't have been a good time.

I don't know what I should call this person. I'm certainly not going to use his name. Mr. Fear of Commitment might be accurate, even if that is totally none of my business. Mr. Three-Year Crush sounds a bit awkward. Other descriptions would have some people trying to guess who he is, and I can't have that. Mr. Attractive might work, but I think I should go with Mr. Friendly, cause he does have a lot of friends.

Anyway, so while I was with some of my friends Saturday, and the subject of the convention came up. And someone was telling a story about some group or other, and my friend says that she doesn't remember that, so it must have been when she was talking to Mr. Friendly. Then my friend pulls me aside and says how she forgot to tell me that Mr. Friendly was at the convention and that he came with some friends of his that she didn't know and that her mom scolded him for not emailing and stuff like that. And he mostly ignored the friends he came with to catch up with other people.

As fun is Mr. Friendly is, I just don't think that would have been a good day for us to catch up. If I had stayed home from the trip and gone to the convention and my husband would have been already ticked at me for that, and then when he came home and asked how my week went, I'd have to tell him that I spent some of the weekend catching up with Mr. Friendly. Nope, that would not have been pretty.

I met Mr. Friendly at a convention that my husband and I went to. My husband is not as into conventions as I am, so I went to a lot of conventions without him. For a while I spent a lot of time with Mr.Friendly. He was a lot of fun.

At some point I realized that I had a crush on the man. I felt really bad about it. I tried to talk to my husband about it, and he actually laughed. Since I did not get any help from my husband, I still had a crush on the man three years later. Luckily, we were rarely alone, and I did not tell the man how I felt.

I have since spoken to the man twice on the phone. About two years ago, to wish him well right before he was going into the hospital, and then again last year when I learned about the homewrecking-slut. I didn't do anything. I just talked to him on the phone.

Damn, but you wouldn't think that a phone call could do that.

So the phone call made me feel better, but I don't know if seeing him in person would be a good idea. I don't really want to date Mr. Friendly or anything like that. Even when there seemed to be nothing that would get my husband and me back together, when I should have been free to see anyone I wanted, I just don't think that there would have been any point to dating Mr. Friendly. I shouldn't date anyone I wouldn't marry. Mr. Friendly isn't going to marry anybody, and there are things about him that would not make him suitable husband material for me anyway. So I shouldn't put myself into a position of getting attached to someone when I already know that it can never go anywhere.

Still, talking to the man did make me feel better. We do not see each other frequently. In fact, we really haven't spent that much time together at all. It just seems like we see each other just often enough to rattle me a little bit. I think I am over the whole silly thing, and then I manage to see him somewhere and realize I might still have a bit of a problem. So spring break would not have been a good time to run into Mr. Friendly and find out that I still have the hots for him.

Soap Opera Day

I love him. I hate him. I want to be rid of him. I miss him. I can't get by without him. Maybe I can make this relationship work out a little bit longer.

Or her. Maybe I'm supposed to say that I can't get by without her.

I'm of course talking about my car.

Who did you think I meant?

I used to be so in love with my car. This was the only car that I ever totally paid for by myself. I got a job, I saved some money for a down payment, and I made all the monthly payments after that. Sure, my husband's name is probably on the title too, but I bought this car all by myself.

Most of my other cars were cars that some other relative didn't want anymore and I bought cheap from them. Or the used car that my parents gave me when I first learned to drive. Or a car that my husband bought that I drove sometimes too.

So this was my favorite car to drive around in. I loved this car when I first got it. And except for recently, it hasn't been a bad car. Now I don't even know if I still want the thing. On the one hand, I don't want to spend much more money getting the thing fixed. On the other hand, I'm not quite ready to commit to buying another car either.

What am I to do?

My life is such a soap opera.

New Year's Eve Party

Well, it's Wednesday again, so you probably already know what that means. Hopefully, the professor will remember to bring the "take home tests," whatever those are, and I will try to do those in the library this afternoon. In theory, I could finish all of the "wet work" that is official class stuff today. If I can get everything done today, that would leave me a week to get everything dry, and then my stuff can get fired at the end of next week. That would just leave painting the seashell, doing the raku (which he hasn't even scheduled yet), and taking the final the week after next. Which would leave me about a week to finish up the model of the Sleestak head and playing around with plaster and such.

I brought you something to read anyway. I know some of you have read the other bit about the New Year's Eve Party, but that was only about one story that I heard. This is about the rest of the evening, so you might want to read it anyway. And after this post I only have one post left to transfer from the other blog. Then I'll have to come up with all new stuff all the time.

(The following was originally posted in another blog on January 2nd.)

It started out slow, but then, doesn't it always? Four of us watched Galaxy Quest while we waited for the others to show up. The cat found us dull and fell asleep.

Other people came in, most bringing food, and one guy brought fireworks. The cat woke up and I gave him a few pieces of ham. Unfortunately "Mom" did not make an appearance, so I hope she is alright.

The cat decided we were not that interesting, even if we did have ham. He left the house early, without maiming anyone. That usually doesn't happen.

The next movie shown was Bubba Hotep, which I didn't really care for the first time around, so I went in the other room. The other room has a seven foot Christmas tree covered with little spaceships. Somehow a number of odd conversations started in this room.

At some point we were trying to explain Furries to a certain redhead. Really, you would think by now a certain redhead would know everything, but apparently not. She was also totally baffled by the concept of Japanese animated porn. Three guys in unison said the word "hentai", but then insisted that they weren't the only ones who knew what it was. So then the game was that whenever a new person came into the room, we would just say the word and see if the new person new what it meant. The first girl just burst out laughing. Her husband came in, one of us said the word, and he just sort of shrugged and said he'd need a little more to go on to be helpful in the conversation. The fireworks guy was the last to come in, the redhead said "hentai", and he asked her how many hours she required.

Somehow the word "queef" was added to our vocabulary as well (by another redhead).

Someone had given the redhead (the first one) a cake loaded with alcohol, so she decided to bring it to us. A bit after that someone was tossing around some magnetic spheres, and we all decided to see how many silly things we could say about balls.

Isn't that much more fun than watching Bubba Hotep?

Later, I learned that there are songs about STDs. Not songs about doing anything fun that might lead to having STDs, but just songs about having STDs. One of them was sung to the tune of the Beatles' "Yesterday," by the husband of the second redhead.

Then we headed outside for the countdown and the fireworks. Fireworks are illegal, and I don't see the big deal about them anyway. I don't know why everyone wants to see them so bad that they'd risk getting fined two thousand dollars. But whatever. I don't even touch the sparklers. Test me for gunpowder if you like. I was not involved.

Then it was back inside for more ridiculous conversations.

There is usually a couple at the party who try to get everyone to dance. But I heard that they recently split, and while they are both good friends with our hostess, neither one of them came to the party. So, there was no dancing (unless it was in the living room during Bubba Hotep and I did not see it). Still, even without the dancing, I managed to not get home until three in the morning.

2 Comments -

Commenter said...

I see a wholesome time as had by all. What happened to the alcohol cake?


Laughingattheslut said...

One of the girls had an extra piece, and when everyone was teasing her about it I went and gave her some of the chocolate cover espresso beans.

I did not have any cake.

I did not have any rum balls either.

There was a lot of the cake left. Several of the kid's friends still hang out at the house, so I think maybe they ended up eating it.

Nice Weekend

There's been a lot of stuff going on around here, but the last few days have been nice. I don't remember much about Friday, other than someone managed to upset me by finding some excuse to put off doing something until Monday. And then I expected some other delay on Monday, but I was wrong. Everything went smoothly on Monday, and the delay caused no problems that I can see.

Saturday I spent most of the day at ceramics class. The big seashell is going well, and it does look a lot like a seashell, even if it doesn't look exactly like the particular shell I was originally trying to copy. I worked on it some more Monday, and just a bit this morning, and now I just have to wait for it to dry.

From ceramics class I rushed to Irving trying to meet up with some of my friends. One in particular that I'd hoped to see wasn't there, but it being Scarborough Faire season that wasn't a big surprise. And I did get there in time to hear the story of the nude photo with the violin, so I guess it wasn't a wasted trip.

Sunday we went to the Dallas Arboretum. Somehow we always end up doing stuff like that on Earthday and Easter and such, when there are big crowds, even though we never actually plan to go do stuff like that on those days. It was just like, what do you want to to do today, how about a park or something, would you like to go to the Dallas Arboretum, yes that would be nice. And then the parking lot is totally full, and we forgot about it being Earthday until we were already there. Oh well.

So I don't think I'd ever been to the Dallas Arboretum before, which is odd since I've lived in the general neighborhood for about twenty-nine years. I like the outdoors and looking at plants and all of that, but I don't remember ever going to this place before, and there were a couple of things there that I'm pretty sure that I would have remembered. There's a fountain with four giant toads. And there was a sculpture called Ultimate Blooms that looked a lot like the transpods from the remake of The Fly. I think the company that made it builds expensive tree houses. Can you picture having a bunch of those in your tree? There was a giant water can and a giant flower pot. Other things were not so clever, like some framework painted red, but when surrounded by bamboo and with two Oriental guard dog statues in front, it looked a lot more interesting.

Sunday we also tried a Mexican food place that we'd never been to before. The salsa was quite good, but we really weren't that impressed with the rest of the food. So Sunday wasn't a bad day at all, but with everything that has happened it wasn't really that great either. I hate that we are spending money as soon as we get it to make one of us feel better. Most of the time I don't need money to feel better, and somehow this made me feel worse, like I was being bought. We spent more than a hundred dollars this weekend, and a lot of that was on stuff that we didn't really need. If he's doing this for me, I would so much rather that he just do what is right in the first place instead of trying to make be feel better after something has gone wrong. But I don't think Sunday was as much about trying to make me feel better as it was about trying to make him feel better. Whatever the reason, I went along with it.

Monday was so much better, at least for me. My husband had originally planned to leave Monday morning or Monday afternoon to drive to the next place he has to work. But he changed his mind and spent most of Monday with me. That means that today he is having a very bad day, because on top of all the work he has to do, he started the day with this long drive that he could have made on Monday. So Monday was very special for me, even though we didn't plan anything as good as Sunday. I don't know exactly how to explain it, but it just meant a lot to me that he did that.

Monday Morons

Okay, so I said that I might address a certain other blogger today, but I think that can wait. But what there was this one question--didn't your mother ever teach you not to make fun of other people?

Well, maybe she was busy teaching me other things, like keeping my legs together and stuff like that. But she did tell me not to make fun of other people for things that are not actually funny and things that are not their fault. So I don't make fun of people with crossed eyes, and I don't make fun of retarded people, etc....

But when people deliberately go off and do stupid things and things to hurt other people and things that most of us think are immoral, there's no reason that I should keep my mouth shut about those people doing stupid and/or hurtful and/or immoral things. In fact, I think that if more people would make fun of them, maybe they would change their behavior.

So rather than get into the whole thing about this other blogger, I'd like to repeat a story I heard Saturday about a former friend of mine.

Well, the story starts out sad. The son of this former friend was killed in a car crash. At the time of the car crash, I was away on a six month business trip. I didn't hear about the car crash until about a week or two later, and I missed the funeral and everything. By the time I got home the kid had been gone several months and people weren't even talking about it much anymore. It was just very strange for me, since the last time I'd seen him was the New Years Eve party when he was talking about college courses he was going to sign up for and jobs he wanted, and then he was just gone, and the next New Years Eve we were all in his home talking about him in the past tense.

I didn't notice it at first, but this former friend just didn't handle the whole thing very well. In fact, he did some really stupid things. He took trips and he gave away a lot of his money to a musician as an "investment" and stuff like that. He probably had an affair with this musician and eventually ended up with another woman half his age. He stopped coming around, and I didn't see much of him.

Now all of that stuff is pretty stupid, but people are allowed to do stupid stuff once in a while. Except that this guy has been married for like thirty years. I'm sorry that he was hurting, but the rest of his family was hurting too, and they needed him. But he couldn't be bothered with that, and he went off and did whatever he felt like doing and the hell with everyone else.

He gave away a lot of their money, some of it without her permission, and some of it she did sign papers for, but she was mislead about what was really going on. She did not agree to the "investment" in the musician. He said he needed money for other things, like repairing the house. The house currently has roof damage and such and she has no money for the repairs. She works seven days a week trying to pay the regular household bills.

So they've been split up for several years now, but most people have kept quiet about it until maybe a year ago. That's when he started pressuring her to move out so he could sell the house. Until then she believed that they could work things out, and she didn't even have a lawyer. And every time she starts to do something about him, he says he wants to go to counseling or something, so everything gets put on hold again. And since no one has actually filed for divorce yet, he is not under court order to pay the bills and such, and he spends his money filling his apartment with big screen TVs and computer stuff.

So a while back, he wanted some photographs of the current girlfriend who is half his age. The first odd thing was that he asked that the photographer's wife not be present. Somehow the photographer's wife would be offensive to the girlfriend. This is not the case with most of the photographer's clients. Most of the clients would rather have another woman around. I mean, you're less likely to worry about the photographer doing or saying something inappropriate in front of his wife. So that part just doesn't make sense, unless maybe the girlfriend just gets offended anytime she's in the room with a more attractive woman. Get over it.

Anyway, the photographer takes all kinds of photos of people. So regardless of what kind of photos you came in for, he's probably going to suggest other photos, cause he likes to make money. And also he has bets with people on how long it takes him to get women out of their clothes after he suggests a nude photo session.

In this case it was 22 minutes.

I don't know what kind of pictures my former friend was expecting, but part of what was taken was a nude picture of this woman squatting down and playing the violin. She was holding the violin in her a**.

Apparently this picture was on My Space for a while. I did not see this picture, because it was taken down before I heard this part of the story. But anyway, the former friend and his half-age girlfriend and his wife were all supposed to go to court this week, and another friend of mine suggested that they circulate this picture right before the court date to rattle the former friend and the violin player. But, the court date has been canceled, or at least postponed, because the guy talked his wife into mediation or something, which is what aways happens when it looks like someone is finally going to make him pay her some money.

So the circulation of this picture hasn't happened yet, and I still have not seen it. I normally do not look at such things, but I think in this case I will have to make an exception.

And yes, when I get the picture, I will be making fun of her.

The Gay Guy at Galaxy Fair '94

Well, I have had a very tiring week, and I might get into it later. But let's skip all that for now and go directly get directly to the bit about the gay guy.

(The following was originally posted on another blog on December 31st.)

I'm sure that gay guy had a real name, but I don't remember what it was, and he might not want it in some strange woman's blog anyway, so let's move on.

So I was setting up stuff in the art room, and gay guy walked in wearing mostly black leather and a dog collar. He was being led around on a leash by a blond girl who later turned out to be his sister. And he told me right away that he was gay. I wondered at first if had been overly friendly, but apparently that is just what he does. Right away he's like "Hi, I'm gay." So that way he doesn't waste time trying to be friends with you if you can't deal with it. Pretty soon after that, religion came into the conversation. I'm a Christian, and maybe I should say that right away so I don't waste time trying to be friends with you if you can't deal with it. Anyway, we went on to talk about the art and whether or not he liked this or that costume and the usual stuff that you talk about at conventions.

So that was nice. Catch you later.

So later, I am in the costume contest with the borg costume, and I do just this tiny bit of the "When Harry Met Sally" restaurant scene as part of the show. And it was a lot of fun, and I tied with a friend for Best Trek.

So after the contest, I run into to this gay guy again. And he is like, you were all talking about being a Christian, and then you get on stage and have an orgasm. And I'm like, I didn't know Christians weren't supposed to have orgasms.

(The following is new material.)

I think that I was a bad influence on this man. I swear I saw him a few years ago at a costume contest at another convention. I'm trying to think of a nice way to describe what he was wearing. Let's see. He was wearing green spandex, and there was a ten inch green pole between his legs, and on the pole was a giant green eyeball with flashing lights. And he would walk around on stage in such a way that the pole and the flashing eye would sort of swing around in a circle.

There weren't many people in this contest, and I believe he won Best Original. Well, I'd certainly never seen anything like it before.

A strange lady at my school

Tuesday's post was a lot of fun. Just thought I'd flat out say something and see how many people were offended, but if anyone was, they didn't say so. And I had wanted to do something about being a Christian or being a Baptist before I got to the Gay Guy at Galaxy Fair post. So that worked out just fine, since I'll probably post about the gay guy tomorrow.

But I think I'll post a bit more about people making strange comments about God.

I went to a Christian school. It wasn't like what you see on TV sometimes. This was a really small school in a Baptist church, and we didn't even have uniforms or anything.

One of the teachers there was Mrs. H. I use the term teacher here because her actual title would mean nothing to my readers. The "teachers" at the school were mostly other people's moms. Most of the time, they didn't teach anything. Mrs. H was almost an exception, because she almost taught an oil painting class. But the class was cancelled after a bunch of high school kids gave her a hard time, and there weren't enough of the rest of us to have a class.

Anyway, Mrs. H was the mother of a girl a year or two younger than I was, Tammy. Older and wiser me now looks back and sees that Tammy had all kinds of problems, but at the time I just thought Tammy acted like Tammy because Tammy was a teenager. One of her problems was that she believed her step father didn't care about her that much, which may or may not have been true. What was true was that her little brother got more attention, but that was probably because he had learning problems and not because his parents loved him a lot more than Tammy.

Another of Tammy problems was that her mom was a bit of a ding-bat.

For the most part, I liked Mrs. H. I was into arts and crafts, and if we ever got to do any of that at school it was because of Mrs. H. But she didn't seem all that bright, and she was one of those people who thought ET was the anti-christ because he rose from the dead. She was clueless about most things, and she seemed to giggle a lot.

Mrs. H was always saying odd things like ET was evil and women shouldn't be allowed to wear pants. But I remember one conversation that seemed odd even for her.

At the time most of the girls younger than me were obsessed with putting stickers on everything. They put stickers on the outsides of their notebooks and on several pages inside their notebooks, and on their pencil holders and on their desks, and possibly even on their Bibles.

So one day most of the kids were out playing ball or something, and some of the girls who were not playing ball were just standing around doing nothing. And the girls have their notebooks out and are looking at all the stickers. And Mrs. H came by and looked at the stickers too.

So she was looking at some stickers that were pictures of flowers, and we she got to the roses she got very happy and started talking about roses. She said that she used to grow roses, and she pointed out some that looked like ones that she used to have. Her whole face lit up when she talked about the roses. We listend to her talk a bit.

And then she suddenly stopped smiling and got very serious. "Of course that was before I married Mr. H. I don't have any roses now. Now I'm doing what God wants me to do."

And then it got really quiet. No one knew what to say after that. I think that we all made excuses that we had to go to the bathroom or something.

She made it sound like Mr. H and/or God hated roses and didn't want her to have any.

Probably it all makes sense. Probably the roses were at a different house that she lived in before she married Mr. H, and now she doesn't have them anymore. Maybe they don't have room for roses, or maybe they don't grow well in that soil, or maybe they don't have enough light to grow roses. Or maybe Mr. H is allergic to roses.

And as for God not liking roses or not wanting Mrs. H to have any, that really sounded strange. But maybe Mrs. H was spending too much time gardening instead of doing church work or spending time with her family. Maybe she gave up gardening to have more time for doing what God wanted her to do.

But she didn't say anything like that. And the roses obviously made her happy, and not having them made her unhappy. And the way she was talking, it sounded like God didn't want her to be happy.

But maybe it was something altogether different that made sense only to Mrs. H. Maybe she gave up roses because ET the anti-christ liked flowers. I don't know.

A most uneventfull couple of days

Not up for much in the way of new posts today. There's a lot going on here and I should be doing something about it, but I'm not. And I should have gone to ceramics class earlier, but I didn't.

My husband came home this morning with a splinter in his finger, and it looks like it's getting infected. So instead of doing what I'm supposed to be doing, I totally freak out over my husband's minor medical problem.

Four months ago I was having fun doing the silliest little things. Now I can't deal with a splinter that isn't even in my finger? There's more to it than that, but that's what freaking me out at the moment. And that's just completely stupid and I cannot spend the rest of the day worrying about dumb stuff like that. I have things to do and need to get on with it.

(The following was originally posted on another blog on December 22nd.)

Well, my husband's schedule came in the mail a couple of weeks ago, and I was momentarily excited. He was supposed to work in someplace called Brownwood. Now, there are several places with similar names in Texas, and I had this one mixed up with someplace else entirely.

Brownsville is in the very southern tip of Texas, about an hour or so from South Padre Island. Now that would have been an excellent place to go right before he has all this time off. Work a couple of days in Brownsville and then drive to South Padre and spend a few days on the beach.

And then I think there's a place called Browntrail, which is in a more northern part of the state, but not in the Panhandle area. It is very near the New Mexico border. Again, he could work a couple of days and then we could have driven to someplace interesting in New Mexico for a couple of days.

But no. This was Brownwood, about three hours away from us in the middle of nowhere. It isn't particularly near anything interesting. So it was basically drive there, try to find a nice motel and a couple of nice restaurants, work a couple of days, and drive back.

So I would have skipped the whole thing and let him go without me, except that he remembered something funny about the last time he had to go there. It had an Underwood's Cafeteria, though at the time he was there it was closed for remodeling. My husband and I both have less than pleasant memories of being forced to eat Underwood's barbecue, and we were wondering if the place was as bad as we remembered. There aren't many of these places around anymore, and in fact this might be the only one left. So we decided we would go to this place for lunch on Tuesday or Wednesday, just for laughs.

We were running a bit behind schedule on Tuesday, and after getting a room at the Days Inn, we barely had time to get a sandwich at Subway. And of course the restaurant would be closed before he got off of work Tuesday night, so we'd have to go to Underwood's for lunch Wednesday.

Wednesday, at a little after eleven, we pulled into an almost empty parking lot and read a sign that said they were closed on Wednesdays.

We had a good laugh and drove down the street to have some tamales instead.

He got off work early that night, but not early enough to pack and head home. So we went to Starbucks and then drove around for a bit to look at Christmas lights.

It was almost a wasted trip, except that he did make some money, and I knitted about half of a new scarf.

The next day we stopped at the Dr. Pepper bottling museum in Dublin. The line was not running, which now only happens on Wednesdays, and maybe not even on Wednesdays if some machine is being repaired. The "Dublin Dr. Pepper" (made with Imperial Pure Cane Sugar) in the newer bottles are now bottled in Temple with the Dublin recipe. We were each given a bottle to drink on the tour, but I don't really care for the drink myself, so mine is still sitting unopened in the kitchen. I would have made an exception and drank that one, but I still had the peppermint shake left over from lunch.

Anyway, we were the only two people on the tour, which surprised me at first, until I realized that they probably only have customers during the summer and on Wednesdays. And, with the line closed down, there's not that much to see. The man who owned the place the last time we took the tour died in 1999, and it's really not the same tour when given by a college kid.

Never mind. Christmas is just a few days away, and it's time to wrap presents.

Happy Holidays.

(Almost) Everyone is going to hell

I'm probably going to make a lot of people mad today. But at least read the post first before you decide to get mad.

Okay, so it's not that I'm telling everyone to go to hell, or that I want some people to just go to hell, or that I think that you're not a good person, or that people deserve to go to hell. Well, maybe I do think that some people deserve to go hell, but that's not the point. That's not why I am writing.

But the fact is, according to church theology, a lot of people are going to hell. So a certain person has wondered why people are praying for her, since she is Jewish and going to hell anyway.

Well, that is the point isn't it? People are praying for her because they don't want her to go to hell, but they are pretty sure that she is.

I just don't happen to be one of those people. She can go to hell if she wants to.

But I didn't write this to tell people that they could go to hell, even if they want to. I wrote this to apologize to all the other people out there that I'd rather did not go to hell, even if they want to. I apologize for not actively praying for those people. I've probably not given it much thought. I don't think that I've ever prayed for them before. Except for the little prayers I am doing right now for them, I haven't prayed for them before, and possibly I will not pray for them ever again.

Go ahead and say it, that makes me a terrible person. I care more about what is going on in ceramics class than I do about the souls of a few dozen people that I have never actually met. That kind of thing has lead to the downfall of America and civilized behavior and all of that. And I know that, and I am sorry, and I apologize. Many years ago I had all these big plans, but in the end I decided that I just wanted to lead my quiet little life and be left alone. But last year someone decided not to leave me alone, and perhaps that is just what I get for not sticking with the original plan. And, again, this year, I started something but then decided that what I really wanted was get my quiet little life back. But that's really not going to work either.

So I don't really have a good excuse for not doing what I ought to be doing. I just haven't been doing it. Forgive me.

And before anyone jumps to the wrong conclusion, the Jewish person being prayed for that I do not care to pray for myself is NOT the person who leaves comments here and occasionally does sort of a Jewish Stuff for Dummies on his own blog. I'm not going to say anything silly like that man needs to turn to God. It doesn't sound like the man ever turned away from God in the first place. Just that I don't think that he's ever turned toward Jesus, and according to the teachings of my church, that is a necessary part of the process if you don't want to go to hell. So I should pray for my fellow blogger and his family, even though he does sound very much like he cares about God and does good works and all of that cool stuff.

There was a joke in school. To shorten it a bit, when you die and are going up the elevator in heaven, you have to be quiet passing a certain floor, because that's where the Baptists are. The Baptists think that only other Baptists get to heaven, and everyone else there just lets us keep thinking that, so they keep quiet and respect our privacy.

Anyway, back then I didn't really know many non-Christians and I don't think I knew any Jewish people. Back when I was having serious theological discussions, I didn't think up any Biblical arguments to win over the Jewish souls. Our discussions, mostly friendly, where against the Pentecostals. And for the most part we thought that the Pentecostals were probably going to heaven too, but we had these discussions just in case. And for the most part those discussions were not meant to save anyone from hell, just to point out that it is still better to be a Baptist.

I have been out of such things for so long, I don't think that I'd know where to start a religious argument with someone. And even if I remembered such things, a religious discussion with Pentacostals is probably very different from one with Jewish people, or Mormons, or Catholics, or people who don't claim any particular religion, or atheists.

So while I am wondering about silly things like if a certain person had a really stressful day at work, or if someone nearly strangled StepMonster, or if someone smashed a stroller into a useless twist of metal, or if someone is having too much to drink after breaking up with her boyfriend, there are more serious problems that are not getting my attention at all. A bunch of you are going to hell, and I just really wish you weren't. And most of the time that even goes for that other Jewish person who needs to turn to God, even if I have not yet prayed for her.

Monday Morons: The end of North Hills Mall

Well, this morning I read something odd. Someone wrote a message to me on another blog. Just pretty much addressed the whole post to me.

Being that it is Monday, this would be the perfect time to answer the post here. But, I really don't have the time. I've got a lot to do today, and I'd already planned what I would post here. Maybe I'll answer later in the week. Maybe I'll save it for next Monday.

Of course now that I know that this person is reading my blog, I guess that there's no hurry. I can answer anytime I want.

But, like I said, I've got a busy day today, and cannot spare the time. I've written several long blogs these past few days, and I need a break. It just so happens, that the next post from the other blog fits right in with Monday Morons, so I'll just post that instead.

But don't worry, I will get back to that other issue at some point.

In other news, the five tornados in the area Friday did not come near enough to my house to do any damage. If anyone I know was hurt, I have yet to hear about it. A cop was killed while driving through the mess, and another man died of a heart attack when he saw what was coming. And, in spite of the news footage of buildings with torn off roofs and such, the tornados will all just F1s.

We had some more excitment around here today, but I don't think I'll get into it right now. I think that I'm okay. I'm going to take something for the headache etc...and then see if maybe I can still get some work done.

(The following was originally published on another blog on December 1st.)

Okay, so it is not the end of North Hills Mall, since that happened a number of years ago. But tonight on the news they said it was actually going to be torn down. It is in violation of some code, it's a hazard of some sort, and the owners have about two months to have it demolished.

The building has only been totally vacant for about two years. I don't remember how long ago the mall closed, but they kept trying to do something else with it for a while. I think for a time part of the movie theater was converted to have live plays, but I never went there to see any. I can't imagine that the place is falling down or anything like that already, and I think the building is only thirty years old anyway. It seems so wasteful to tear it down. Surely it could be fixed up and made into something else.

What I really find odd about the whole North Hills Mall thing, is that it is about a mile away from the North East Mall, which is so busy that about ten years ago they evicted people from their homes to add on to the mall and make more parking spaces and two new shopping centers.

Both malls are located right where three freeways converge. North Hills Mall is in North Richland Hills, and North East Mall is in Hurst. If it were not for all of the bridges and overpasses in the way, you could probably see one mall while standing in front of the other. And I believe that they were both built at about the same time. The North East Mall was the larger mall, with the standard anchor stores such as Sears and Wards and Dillard's, while the North Hills Mall had some less familiar anchor stores that were maybe supposed to be a bit more high-end. And the North Hills Mall had a Luby's Cafeteria and a food court right near the main entrance, while the North East Mall originally sold food throughout the mall. Both originally had movie theaters, though not of the same company.

Funny thing, but when I was a kid, I never realized that the two malls were right next to each other like that. I mean, they are not actually on the same freeway, and you can't see one while you are in the parking lot of the other one. And when I was a kid going to the mall, I was too busy talking in the back seat to pay attention to where were were driving. And we never went to both malls on the same day, so it was about ten years before I knew where they were in relation to each other. When I was younger, I preferred the smaller mall, since both had movie theaters, but only the smaller one had the food court. And I didn't care one way or the other about the anchor stores. I liked the smaller stores and candle shops, and things of that kind were in both malls.

But the North East Mall, the one that was larger to start with, continued to grow despite the closing of Wards and later the United Artists movie theater. The North Hills Mall also lost one of its anchor stores, and it seemed to be in rapid decline after that.

Anyway, it just never made sense to me why the people at the North East Mall didn't just buy out the smaller mall and fix that up rather than evict people from their homes to add on the mall they already had. So the little mall is about to be demolished, and the stores nearby are also losing business and closing, while the larger mall just gets larger and the traffic becomes more of a hassle. I just don't get it.

Deal, or No Deal

Well, this was kind of a dumb thing to do. I should probably save it for Monday. But how many times to I want to be the moron on my own blog feature?

I think we heard about it on Monday. I had wanted to do it last year when they came to Dallas, but I hate Dallas, and it was raining so I didn't go. Today they were about two miles from my house.

So I just thought I would get up at a reasonable time and see what the line looked like. I thought I might get in line at 6:30 am. Or maybe half an hour earlier or later. I could have gotten there even earlier than that, but I didn't really want it that bad. It had rained a lot the night before, and I had this picture in my head of a bunch of people standing in line in a big puddle of water. I really didn't want it that bad.

The auditions or the try outs or whatever you would call it were at a car dealership. Maybe they called it a casting call. Anyway, it was at this car place. And I knew right where the car place was. But I'd never actually tried to get to the car place before. I drive past it on the way to school several times a week, but it is on the freeway, and once I got over there I wasn't quite sure which exit to take and how to get turned around going the right way and all of that. So I lost about twenty minutes getting that figured out. I tried to drive up behind it on another street, but the street dead-ended before I got where I thought I needed to be. So I turned around and started again. This time I got it right, but I noticed a lot of people just sort of walking around. Was I that late? Did we have to park in the next town or something?

Okay, I wasn't that late. 7:30 or so, about an hour later than I thought would be a good time. But it was a bit cold and I didn't want to wear my big ugly coat. I thought if I waited til the sun came out I probably wouldn't need it. And I was wearing two sweaters and a fifteen foot scarf.

So I drove behind the car place, and there is a guy telling people that the parking lot is full, so we'll have to park behind the fitness center down the street and to the right. Well, that's not too bad. There were more people at the fitness place making sure we parked where we were supposed to.

So people were getting out of their cars and carrying things like folding chairs and ice chests. I only brought a book. I did happen to have a chair in the car, but after a bit of thought I decided I didn't want it bad enough to carry it across the field to the car place.

Well, that was the good thing about getting there an hour later than I meant to. The mud in the field was starting to dry. It was probably a bit messy earlier.

Half way across the field, I saw two people coming back the other way. Does it look that bad? Well, go and see for yourself. You'd probably get in, but it's going to be a long wait, and we don't want to be in that line without chairs. Good luck. Thanks.

So I get in line at about 7:45. I'm standing in line between a 75 year old woman and a postman. I ask them to hold my place for a minute, and I went to ask some other people how long they had been in line. A couple of guys in the middle of the line said they had been there since about 6:15. Okay. That would have been nice, but I probably wasn't doing too bad myself. So then I went to talk to some people right up at the front.

How long have you been here?

Since Wednesday.

Wednesday. Wow. That's nuts. I went back to find my place in line. There were already like thirty people in line behind me. I told the postman about the people being in line since Wednesday.

A couple of black girls behind the postman lucked out and got a parking space at the car place. One of them walked down the road a bit for some coffee. A lot of people did that, but I don't drink coffee, and I didn't bring any money with me anyway. Besides, I had remembered that Playtah said she didn't have a bathroom break for thirteen hours, and I didn't want to use the port-a-potties.

Okay, so the casting call thing was supposed to be from 10am to 1pm. So I was going to be in line for two hours before they even got started. One of the black girls offered the old lady one of their chairs for a while, but she declined. Someone was coming back for her, and he was bringing their own chairs.

Only he did not bring the chairs. He had to park even farther away than I did, and he decided he couldn't drag the chairs that far. If he had realized where he was being sent, he would have stopped and unloaded the chairs when he dropped off his mother. Someone else let her borrow a chair for a bit.

Once in a while, the line would move forward a bit, which was odd since no one was actually being allowed inside yet. But during two hours we moved forward about twenty-five feet or so. Every once in a while someone will come by with forms for us to fill out. One page looks exactly like something that I already printed off the computer. The other page looks slightly different, but it has the wrong date on it. I keep the first page that I had already filled out and then sign the second page that they gave me. It was hard enough to write something legible at home, so I don't think I'm going to try rewriting most of it while standing in line.

It is cold. I've had worse days at Six Flags, but that was like twenty-five years ago. I have never liked being cold, and the older I get the less I like it.

It isn't raining, but the postman brought his rain gear, and he loans it to the old lady.

There's a rumor going through the line that once we get inside we'll only have thirty seconds to talk, so we'd better decide what we want to say.

The line is just huge now. Announcements are being made. Like if you parked at Kroger's you might want to leave now cause they are towing the cars away.

The college is a very short drive from the car place. I am starting to think that if we only get to talk for thirty seconds, I might get out of here sooner than expected. I should probably go to the ceramic lab after this.

They have opened the doors and let a few people inside. The line starts to move again. A bunch of people make jokes with the postman. All day, same jokes, different people.

Mr. Postman, you got my check in there?

I had grabbed a book on the way out, but I hadn't read any of it. I'm sorry I brought the thing. It's just too cold for me to do anything like read. Some people are trying to be friendly and ask what I'm reading. Sorry, I just grabbed a book of short stories. Right now I'm not really reading anything.

One of the authors in the book is Orson Scott Card, so me and the man who brought his seventy-five year old mother talk about Ender's Game for a bit. After I found out he liked science fiction, I said I should have brought an actual Dr. Who scarf instead of the thing I was wearing. He said what I should have brought was the blue phone booth.

More people are making jokes with the postman. He takes out an envelope and puts a check-mark on it.

Mr. Postman, you got my check in that bag?

Yes, I do. See?

The line is moving, and at about 10:30 we get inside the caution tape. So this is where I would have started from if I'd been there at 6:15. So now I am thinking that I'll be inside the building by about 11:00.

There is an awful smell. A truck came to service the port-a-potties. Yuck.

Now, for some reason the line seems to be moving slower than it was. And it is getting colder. I had thought it would get warmer later in the day, but we just ended up getting more clouds and a bit of wind. I am really starting to feel bad. But I'm inside the ropes now, and I've been waiting for more than three hours, so I can wait a bit more.

11:30, and I'm still not inside. I'm not trying to look cool with the scarf anymore. I've got a bunch of it wrapped around my head.

Some girls are singing the Beatle's song Please Mr. Postman.

The scarf wasn't the cool attention getting thing that I thought it was going to be. In line behind me was the cat in the hat. Elvis was a bit ahead of me. Someone brought six little cheerleaders. There was a lady in a foil covered box, so I think that was supposed to be a briefcase costume. Closer to the front of the line was a guy in a bear costume. At least five people brought dogs.

12:00 now. I just didn't realize how cold I was. The line is moving again, but I can barely walk.

Someone makes some more announcements. And the bit about only getting to talk for thirty seconds has been confirmed by someone from the show, but he says that really we only have twenty seconds. And he says that we'll be going in about ten people at a time, and we'll be pointed to when it's our turn and don't waste any of your twenty seconds saying how much you like the show or the models or Howie. All that stuff is just assumed. Talk about yourself and why you should be on the show.

So I am finally inside the building. I'm glad I'm in the building, but I'm still cold. Stiff and having trouble walking cold. I get my papers ready and straighten my scarf.

Our group is called, and they're telling us to hurry, but I can't. I just can't move that fast. Luckily I'm in a group with a very old woman and it just looks like I'm trying to wait for her.

Anyway, when it was my turn I talked about being an artist and being able to make a lot of stuff but not making any money. I don't think I sounded very good, and I don't think that they bothered to look at my paper or anything. I was just too cold to look happy. I'm sure that they want happy people on their show. No one in our group was asked any questions, and we left.

People from the show were trying to get everyone to walk straight out the back door. I don't think so. I've got a long walk to get to the car, and I don't think I am up to that yet. I see some people drinking coffee. I don't like coffee, but if it is warm I'll take some.

A guy from the car place tells me it's three dollars a cup. And then I remember that I've left my purse and stuff in the car.

Then he tells me he's just joking, and the coffee is free. And then when he hears that I don't even like coffee, he finds some instant hot chocolate for me. Nice.

So I ask the guy if he got to audition or whatever, and he says no. And he tells me about the excitement of the last few days, about people being camped out since Wednesday, about having a bunch of people around during the storm last night, and about how the police were called to break up a couple of fights. And how the police hate his boss for agreeing to host this thing in the first place.

So I start walking to my car at about 12:30. I don't think anyone is going to call me. I think I totally wasted my day and could have been in ceramics class. I thought about going there for a few hours, but decided I was just too cold to get any work done. I think that it might be nice and warm in the kiln room, but I really don't feel well.

Since I parked where I was told to, my car is right where I left it. The fitness people left some ads and a three day pass on my window. I'll think about it later.

I still feel a bit cold. I've tried to take a nap and I've had a bath, but I still don't feel so good. I should eat something, but I'm not hungry. I'm drinking hot lemonade instead.

Well, now I know what it's like if I ever want to try to get on a game show again. And it wouldn't have been a bad day if it had been the usual spring weather of this time of year.

So if you ever wanted to know what a casting call for a game show was like, now you know.

And thanks to everyone who wished me luck.

Catching up or the week so far--Part 2--The rest of the week

I was writing this post, and it turned into this really long thing about ceramics class, so I decided to make it into a two part thing so that if ceramics you find ceramics really boring you can skip most of it. If you like ceramics but find the rest of my life dull, you can skip this part and scroll down.

Anyway, on the ceramics front I have finished a vase and a terra cotta plate with some sea turtles on it, I am waiting for some tiles and a pylon shaped box to get glaze fired, I am now working a big seashell, and I am about to start a really big terra cotta tile with a dragon's head on it.

As for the rest of the week, it's hasn't been too bad. I went to church on Easter. I hadn't been in about a month, and I hadn't gone shopping for anything special to wear that day. But then it turned a bit cold, so people weren't necessarily wearing what they bought for the occasion anyway. So I ended up going to church wearing my nice bright colorful...scarf? It wasn't a Dr. Who scarf, but it was long enough to be one, about fifteen feet.

None of us were up to dealing with long lines at restaurants, so I went home to have lunch with my husband. So I changed clothes and we headed to Chipotle's, thinking that wouldn't be a place for Easter crowds. The people at Chipotle's thought that too, so they decided to close for the holiday. Okay. So we ended up at Pancho's instead. The people working there were having way too much fun. I hadn't been to that location for a while, so I don't know if they're normally like that or not.

Then we walked around the mall. The odd thing was that the anchor stores were open, but the stores in the "mall" part were closed. So we walked through Sears and Barnes and Noble, and then we went home.

I don't remember what happened Sunday afternoon, but I remember it ended up being a bit of a fight. He immediately wanted to make up. But I just can't deal with that sort of thing anymore. I shouldn't have let him come home. Anyway, most of the time now he is gone for four or five days a week, and now that I've gotten used to it, maybe it is better that way. I only see him two or three days a week, and we usually have some pleasant time together then, and I have peace and quite the rest of the time. But it seems like something will always ruin whatever pleasant time we have together, so I don't really look forward to that anymore either.

Before the fight, we had pretty much planned out how we would spend Monday. But when Monday came, I really didn't think I wanted to spend the day with him. I tried reorganizing the day in my head so that I spent most of the day without him, but that didn't seem to work. I just decided to go on with the original plans even if it wasn't going to be fun.

First, we went to a store that we used to buy a lot of junk at. We didn't really need anything, but we'd seen a sign about them getting new management, so we just stopped by to see if they were going to have the same sort of stuff and the same sale days and like that. Everything was going to be the same until further notice. He bought a shirt, and we left.

Next, we went to the college. He stayed in the car and listened to a bit of a book on tape while I went to the library and made some copies. Then I went to the ceramics lab to see if my plate was ready, which it was not. Although the plate had been loaded into the kiln, the kiln hadn't been fired yet because the professor decided he didn't want to come back during Easter to check on things. Fine. I wedged some clay that I had left on the table Saturday. Just didn't want to feel guilty about taking up that much table space.

After that we went to lunch, and then to a library in Fort Worth. Despite being mad at him the day before and not really wanting to spend the day with him, it was actually starting to be nice. He took me to a vegetable stand that I buy a lot of herb plants from. I bought too many of them for the one trip, but I doubt I'll be in that neighborhood again anytime soon. And I like to buy all the herbs there that I can, cause they charge about half what most other stores do.

So that was nice. He took me to a couple of places that I really wanted to go, and instead of trying to get me to hurry, he said he'd be in the car listening to his tape. So we went to a few more stores that he wanted to go to.

And then we went to another bookstore. Now, I like books, and I like going to bookstores, but not so much as I once did. I don't really need to keep filling the house with books. But if you take me to a bookstore, I'll probably find something that I want. So I think that it's better if I don't go to the bookstore until I am actually looking for something specific.

So were are in the bookstore. And I check up on him a couple of times, and he comes to find me a couple of times. I'm carrying around three books that I probably don't need. One of them was a plant book, and one was a cookbook of mostly Asian noodle dishes, and I don't even remember what the other one was. But they were on sale, and I'd probably never find the Asian noodle thing again, so I'm carrying them around and my husband is probably going to buy them for me when he buys whatever he's carrying around the store. I'm just finding things to look at while I'm waiting for him, but there always seems to be one more thing that one of us has to look for. And then it seems like it has been a while since I've seen him, and I really should not pick up anymore books. I think that I'm going to go find him and suggest that maybe it is time to leave. Only I can't find him.

I can't find him because he isn't in the store. He bought his books and went to the car to read them, without even telling me. He knows how much I hate this behavior. If he wants to wait in the car, fine, but he has to tell me that first. And it was especially bad since I was only in the store waiting for him anyway.

So I put the books back on the shelf and went to the car and got in. I just about lost it. How dare you treat me like this? How dare you treat me like this anyway, but after seventeen years of you seeing how much it upsets me, and on top of what you've put me through this last year, how dare you? I would have thought that since you can't take back the really horrible things that you've done to me that you would try so much harder to not do all the little things that I hate. But no, you're always going to do all the little bad things that you've always done, and now I have the really big terrible things to worry about too.

I really didn't say much to him about it. He's not listening. He thinks that he can do what he wants as long as he apologizes for it after. He doesn't think that he has to do anything about his bad behavior. There is no point in talking to him about it. He just doesn't get it.

So my nice day ended up being ruined after all.

Okay, enough about that. I don't really want to get into that anyway.

Tuesday morning I had to leave early for school, and I'm sure he was out of the house about an hour later. I've already blogged about Tuesday's class, so I won't repeat myself. Let's just say that except for getting to help a friend with his mold and getting to take home my completely finished terra cotta sea turtle plate, it was not a good day. And if I did anything after school that day, I can't remember it.

Wednesday was a much better day. I finally got around to doing something that I've been putting off since spring break. I glazed four tiles. I tested the backyard clay by pressing some into the sea turtle tile mold and rolling out a slab that I pressed stamps into. I started working on the big seashell. I went to both the morning class and the evening class. Between classes I went to the library, and then I went to the mall, ate lunch at Arby's, bought seeds and vegetable seedlings at a nursery, and bought a potted flower plant at a different nursery. I think that day was supposed to be Buy flowers for no reason day, or something like that. My flower looks like a wildflower I used to pick when I was a kid, and it is supposed to self sow lots of seeds. Probably not the sort of flower Tara had in mind, but I was happy I found it.

Thursday I went to class and mostly worked on the big seashell. It was Spring Fling Day, which means that you get to go outside and buy a hotdog and soda and everything for a dollar while there is really loud live music. The lady didn't have change yet, so she trusted me to come back and pay later, which I did. Then I went to art club meeting, which was rather pointless. I know that I can't do any art club stuff, and I'm probably not going to be a student next year. I have nothing to contribute at this point. Right now I don't even expect to be part of the student art sale. At least in the past I had suggestions for other people, but yesterday there weren't enough people there to make suggestions to. I just went to make Susan happy, which it did, so that was good.

Thursday was also the day for the opening of a student art show. The reception was a 4:30. I totally forgot about it. But after I was reminded of it, I did want to go. But it wasn't worth the effort of going home and then coming back. And I'd already done all my errands in the area on Wednesday. But I decided I could find something to do.

I went back to one of the nurseries and got into a bit of an argument. I didn't really need anymore plants, but they were supposed to be on clearance. You really should not buy plants that have grown too big for their little containers, but if the price is right I'll try it anyway. So on Wednesday I'd bought about ten plants that had been marked down to twenty-nine cents. So I went to pick up a few more, and to ask if the tomato and pepper plants were part of the clearance too. So they tried to tell me that not only were the tomato and pepper plants not part of the clearance, but the plants I picked up were not part of the clearance, and that I even had the wrong kind of plants. Only the little cabbage and lettuce plants were twenty-nine cents. Someone must of have moved the sign.

I could understand if someone accidentally moved a sign. I could understand if a customer had moved some plants. I could understand if someone made a mistake yesterday and sold me plants for less than they were supposed to be. I could understand if someone claimed that the sale was for 2 inch pots and I had 4 inch pots. But I can not understand why someone would just out right lie to me about something, when it says right on the sign the sale includes cucumbers, eggplants, squash, melons, etc.... Someone moved a sign and changed everything on the sign to match where it had been moved to, but that's not where the sign is supposed to be? I don't think so. I pointed out that they had made a mistake, twice. Instead of quietly giving me a discount, saying thank you, and removing the sign, they again insisted that the mistake was mine. Fine. Keep your dying plants. It isn't worth my time to point out your mistakes to your boss, even when I'm only here to kill time anyway.

So that was fun. I went to some more stores. I bought my husband some discounted Easter candy. I shouldn't have opened any of it. Now I'm eating too much of it myself. Then I went to Home Depot. I found some discounted lumber that would have been useful, but then I realized it wouldn't fit in my car. It's just as well, since I'm about out of money anyway. And they had these really huge orange lilies, but again, I was about out of money. Maybe they'll still be there in a few weeks.

So then it was back to school for the reception. Brie and the more common cheeses, and some other cheese that was good but I could not identify. Pineapple and strawberries and melon balls and grapes. Some sort of spicy seafood salad in tiny sandwiches. And more common sandwich stuff like ham and cheese. And cookies. The cookies with the pecans were especially good.

One of the nice things about being an art student is that once in a while there is free food.

Another nice thing is that sometimes there is a show or a competition, and this time two friends of mine where in both of those. I knew that Susan got a painting into the show, but no award for it, and unfortunately the dolphins she had done in ceramics had not been selected for the show. Another friend, the one who was trying to mold something Tuesday, got a ceramic copy of a lamp into the show and won a twenty-five dollars gift certificate from Trinity Ceramics. We had to twist his arm a bit to get him to the reception. He had the idea that it was some fancy thing and he didn't want to go. Fancy? Most of us were still wearing our lab clothes. Free food, and you get an award. How bad can it be?

So when I was looking at the stuff in the show, I saw Susan's dolphins. And I saw a lot more stuff from ceramic class than I remembered being selected. Turns out that there was another competition going on at about the same time, and Susan won a four hundred dollar scholarship. That should pay for almost half of what she plans to do during the fall semester. And who cares what that other art judge thinks anyway.

My friend was a bit shy about going to get his award from Trinity Ceramics. You mean I'm supposed to go over there now? Like, didn't everyone else go over there when their names were called. Yes, you go over there now. Poor guy.

So then he comes back with his award, and he asks if I want his prize money. He doesn't know where Trinity Ceramics is, and he doesn't want the twenty-five dollars enough to go look for it. And he's not going to be doing anymore ceramics for a few years anyway, so he wants to give the certificate to either me or the professor.

Hey, the professor has a job and tons of ceramic stuff already. Do I want twenty-five dollars to spend at Trinity? Of course I want twenty-five dollars to spend at Trinity. As soon as I test fire something with the clay from my backyard, I'm going to Trinity anyway to buy a couple of screens so I can make more clay.

But then he sees that his name is already written on the certificate, and he's afraid that they won't let me spend it. That's okay. I'll go over there in a couple of weeks anyway, and I'll ask.

And it was nice of him to think of me anyway.

This morning I finished a gardening project that I've been working on for two years. I planted a bunch of asparagus, and now that all the asparagus plants have emerged, I've covered the area with sand and put a bunch of shells around the plants. It probably needs a couple more bags of sand, but I think it is good enough for now. Fifty pound bags of sand are heavy. I did a couple earlier and a couple last night and the last one just before I started writing this post.

Now I need it to rain. Really rain. Get everything wet rain. Not just look grey and sprinkle stuff here and there. Actual soak the ground rain. Which it is supposed to do today, so I've put off water stuff for a while, but now I've probably waited too long and lost a tomato plant. But that's okay.

But please rain already.

Tomorrow, I am probably going to go do something silly. Wish me luck. If I go I'll tell you about it maybe next Tuesday. Just wish me luck anyway.