Frog and Goat

I finally went to lunch with a co-worker today. We’ve tried to get together for lunch for a few months and it has become comical how many times we’ve had to cancel. Today the planets must have aligned because there we were tucking into two plates of Drunken Noodle with Shrimp.

The restaurant is on a busy corner just off campus and I swear there are more kids on campus in the Fall than there are in the Spring. Maybe I just think that’s true coming off a summer session that seemed pretty light to me. Once again, I’m thrilled to be working there and I’m thrilled to have a colleague who likes to eat on the daring side. Not that Thai is that daring, but at least it is different and SPICY. The Nam Prik Dang (or as I like to call it Hell in a Jar) rocked my boat.

Monday night my sister and I went out to dinner and while we were on the way home she said I had plenty of fodder for the blog. I figured it was about time I used all of that material up.

We went to a local restaurant that does a Cheap Date Night and we scored big. For $35 we split a bottle of wine, a house salad, a bowl of penne pasta with puttanesca sauce and bread pudding for dessert. De-darn-licious. My sister is a pretty good cheap date. As far as good material, all I’ll say is that she got a little loopy on the wine. Good times.

While we were headed to the restaurant, I asked if we could take The Niece to the State Fair this weekend. We’re babysitting and thought it would be fun to introduce The Niece to the thrills and chills of elephant ears, funnel cakes, cotton candy, corn dogs, greasy pizza slices and sno-cones. Oh, and all the animals too. We have permission to go and I have to admit we’re a little excited. I’m sure by the time Saturday evening rolls around the three of us will be cashed out on the couch before the sun goes down.

This, my friends, is a roof.

Amazon. I ordered items from you on 9/15. Where’s the quick delivery and shipping times I’m so used to? This is the last time I actually pay to have shipping expedited. And, why is it so hard to find out how to contact you? I don’t want to read a bunch of pages with links on them. Give me your damn contact info. Amazon you get a big fat F today.

Mother Nature. You suck too. It is September 27th. It is still hot and humid here. In case you hadn’t noticed September 27th is Fall. Oh yeah, we need some freaking rain too.

MSN Music. When I buy a song, I expect that it will actually be the song I paid for. You name them correctly but when I play them I get some other song not even by the artist.

And, finally, to the deadbeat who sold us this house. We got a phone call here today from a company with whom you have a breach of contract. I called them back and gave them the little bit of information I had about you. So, when LTD Financial hunts your deadbeat butt down, you’ll know it was me who put them back on the trail. When people steal it really pisses me off because theft makes me have to pay more for services. Karma will hunt you down, jerk.

I was behind one of these on the way home this afternoon and I purposely sped up just so I could give it the Look. I was afraid the driver was going to get on the interstate and I just didn’t want him to go without a Look.

Lucky for me, the driver was going the same way as I was and once we were alone I think he gave me a show. Maybe I just want to believe he was putting the car through its paces just to show me. I turned off the radio so I could hear his engine. The Wanda Honda tried to keep pace because what the engine lacks in pick-up the driver makes up for in driving skill on back roads. I know no fear and will take curves like I’m driving a muscle car.

He gave me one last demonstration and then responsibly used his blinker and turned off the road. I was grinning like a fool.

I blame this insanity on this car…my first. Mine was black with grey detailing.

My sister just called to tell me two things. I’ll be a repeat aunt again by mid-June (actually she told me a pretty specific time period but, pahlese, we must be vague on this here site). And, she mentioned she needs to go out for sister night and could it be soon. So, we’re going out on Monday night. And, they are adopting so there’s a possibility of adult beverages. We’ll see how it goes.

As it turns out I’m having a mammogram on Monday so I’ll be good and ready to go out as well. I’m also taking all of Monday off because, frankly, after sticking the girls into the vise they call an x-ray machine, I need some recovery time. This will be the second mammogram I’ve had and I’m not looking forward to it one bit. This one is supposed to be my baseline. The other one was to identify a cyst years ago.

Which has a funny story naturally. I had a cyst. I went to the surgeon to have it suctioned out. As the needle was in I asked the doctor if he ever had to fill up two of the collection tubes and he said sometimes. Then he promptly started filling up the second collection tube out of my cyst. I laughed and so did he and the nurse. Leave it to me to ask the dumbest question at just the right time.

SalonDOTcom has a section called Audiofile and man alive there’s some excellent music there including what I found there today. You have to have a premium membership but that’s a good $35 to spend. I think you can get monthly memberships for $6. Anyway, plugging Salon wasn’t why I started this entry. Although, really, they have great articles.

I do highly recommend finding a copy of a Bettye LaVette record. Cue that thing up and pour yourself a glass of wine. She has an outstanding and soulful delivery. And, I can’t believe I’ve never heard of her. She’s been recording music longer than I’ve been alive. Let me tell you, I dig some old school soul.

If you have a premium membership, check out the Audiofile for today and yesterday on Salon.

Hong Kong Phooey I was not. This morning I dragged myself into work and when I got to the parking lot, I wondered how on earth did I just drive in. I think the sleepers in my eyes were as big as my eyes. I didn’t even notice that no one else from my office had parked in the lot. It didn’t dawn on me that I was the first person in the building until the alarm started beeping. I couldn’t get the key out of the door because I was carrying a bunch of stuff. So, you know what happened…I got the call of shame from the alarm company. I gave up the secret word and had to tell them my name. They can just put another tick mark next to my name. I’m a frapping idiot.

I spent the remainder of the day trying to design a form using software I’ve never used before. And, to top it off the upstairs toilet is STILL broken and then right after lunch the admin told us to try not to use the plumbing since they were cleaning out our pipes. Whatever. Someone needs to start paying overtime and get this plumbing stuff taken care of once and for all. This is the second time in six months we’ve been without basic freaking plumbing.

I didn’t figure out the “why” of the garage door opening by itself until I got in the car the next day. Of course, the better-half joked that maybe the snake slithered into my car, hit the button and was waiting for me in the back seat. I checked the car out when I got into it. If there had been a snake in there every single person in a 5 mile radius would have known about it. Good thing for the local community there wasn’t a snake in my car.

Anyway, back to the mystery of the garage door. I have one of those middle consoles and it is a two-parter. Hit one switch and the top opens a small shallow storage area and hit the other switch and the bottom deeper storage area opens. Earlier that day I had to go out to the car to get my emergency dollar out of the shallow storage area so I could go to the local Mexican place for lunch. We have calculated that it costs about $8 to eat there and I could only come up with $6 in dollars and $1 in quarters. That’ll teach me not to go by the ATM. When I opened the shallow storage area, a pen I keep in there flew into the back seat. I retrieved it and hastily shoved it back into place. Then I smacked the lid down and went to lunch.

When I opened the compartment the next day to replace the emergency dollar, I noticed the garage door opener was shoved way in the back and directly under the hinge. I think the hinge relaxed and pressed the garage door opener and opened and closed the door.

The garage door hasn’t “magically” opened and closed itself since then so I’m pretty confident the mystery has been solved.

Early this evening, I went outside to water some of our potted plants. After watering the grapefruit tree (in a pot and grown from a seed), I turned and saw the biggest snake skin still attached to the under-the-house access door. It creeped me out. I went into the house, called the better-half and told him he needed to come home (it was after 6:30 anyway). There are some boy jobs around our house that this girl just doesn’t do. Opening the access door to see if the snake is sitting just inside the doorway is a BOY job.

After I hung up with him, I headed up our back staircase. I thought the dehumidifier in the garage was making a racket but when I got to our bedroom I realized it was the garage door opening. That makes a girl home alone a tad freaked. I looked out the window and didn’t see anyone and it looked like my car was untouched (the garage door opener is in the car). I tiptoed around to the front stairwell and crept out the door with my keys in hand. I figured I had a pretty good chance of speeding away in the car if some freak had just broken into the house.

I got to the car and looked in the garage and it didn’t look like anyone was in there so I grew a sack and marched right in. No one was in there but I did consider sitting on the front steps until the better-half got home. As I stood on the steps, I realized he didn’t say he was out the door when I talked to him, so I just went back in the house and curled up on the couch with keys still in hand.

Check out the snake skin:

That’s almost 5 feet of snake: