Sunday I’m standing in the shower trying to wash the lack of sleep off my face and I’m trying to map out the plans for the day. Gotta get everything super clean, gotta go to Lunds to get roadtrip snacks and windex and hey may as well get coffee while I’m there since Caribou is giving away a free extra shot because of daylight savings…daylight savings…
SHIT
I completely forgot to set my clocks, I’m in the shower shouting to David to get up, it’s not 8:30am it’s 9:30am, I’ve got an open house at noon, I want to get out by 11am so that the realtor has time to set up and anyway I want to get on the road early.
Blegh, so hardcore, quick running around. My peaceful, long shower that I had intentionally gotten up early for was cut short since I wasn’t up early, I was up late. We got dressed, divided tasks, traded tasks, tried so hard to wake up.
I went to the grocery store for road trip snacks and found myself briefly contemplating then shunning the Doritos. WTF? I bought apples, plums and carrots to snack on. Jesus, what’s wrong with me? This get’s rectified later, also, we already had a bag of chips.
Coffee was purchased, I came back, David was slaving away in the kitchen. We collected things together, I got him in the car and we headed out.
Ghengis is very funny in the car. He loves going for rides because going in the car always means going somewhere fun. Even the vet is fun because he gets good treats and he gets to see other dogs. While we’re on the road going fast he settles down and takes in the scenery but the moment I slow down he’s shivering with excitement, he literally starts whining anxiously as we MUST be getting close to the fun place. The instant I put the car in park he bolts from the back seat to the front seat, climbs in my lap and waits to be let out. This is a problem when you are stopped for a train and decide to put the car in park as it makes for easier waiting.
This also makes getting gas at the gas station in Red Wing a problem. I have a number of little nervous tics and habits. One of the bigger ones is that I chew my lip. With all that’s been going on lately I have been chewing my lip a lot. i’ve chewed a bit of a hole on the right side, it’s swollen, cracked and it looks like someone backhanded me (no one back handed me, no one would survive laying a hand on me for if I didn’t finish them off, my dad surely would). The dog, in his excitement, landed on my lap and as I was trying to put his compact 35 pounds of pure muscle and impulse into the back seat he managed to hook his nail right into the chasm in my lip. Like directly into it. Ow.
I got a call from my realtor letting me know she was on her way to my house. I called her back, perplexed as it was already noon. No, it seems the open house was changed to 2-4. Fine fine, easy enough, we’re already on the road but it would have been nice to have not been so panicked.
I couldn’t remember how to get to Barn Bluff, the big, pretty bluff over Red Wing so we went on as we had another destination in mind for hiking and all that.
We stopped at Frontenac State Park where we did some walking on trails and stood high over the river. I have pictures, they’re not very interesting, mostly the dog and David walking in nature. I got to watch a sea plane take off and a giant barge go by. This time I remembered to bring a water dish for Ghengis. We had a snack, played with the dog some more and took off.
We headed south again, with David navigating and me driving. I love love love driving long road trips. if it weren’t for the trashy meth habit and the weird bowlegged walk you seem to develop I might have considered a career as a long haul truck driver. Except not.
We meandered our way down and around until we got to Whitewater State Park. Here’s where I got all healthy and defied my true fat-girl nature. We hiked up to the top of Chimney Rock Bluff and god dammitall I forgot to bring the camera. That thing is high, way high, not ‘oh i’m fat and i had to climb without an escalator’ high, but for real high. I couldn’t find any good photos showing just how high a climb this was, but these are some good photos taken by someone I don’t know who seems to have gone during a very pretty time of year (my photos, had I taken any, would have been more barren and desolate with the lack of foliage and all). None of the photos show just how high I climbed so you’ll just have to trust me that I climbed a very very high bluff (one composed mostly of sandstone and quartz with no fossils to be found) and I hiked a goodly long way to get to and from it as we parked in the wrong parking lot.
The dog LOVES hiking through the woods (as does David), he’s a muscley strong little trooper who never ever runs out of energy. We met some people at the beginning of the hike and a couple hours later, when we were heading back we saw them again and they noted that Ghengis was not worn out at all. I know, as long as there’s some of stimulation that dog will not get tired. Luckily he passes out the minute he gets in the car. In addition to new and exciting things to smell and explore, the woods offers up an exotic buffet of animal turds for Ghengis to sample. He seems fond of deer turds and decidedly uninterested in owl pellets (not technically turds, but I thought he’d be more interested). I can now identify many major turd groups.
David slows me down (driving, not hiking, I slow him down when we hike), he’s not nearly as impatient as I am, he doesn’t really need me to drive fast. There’s soemthing about that lack of impatience that causes me to slow down as well. I don’t have to urge to drive as fast as possible, even though I love driving fast. We meandered over to Rochester to get some dinner and I wasn’t even worried about getting there quickly.
I’d spent the day doing healthy things and eating healthy snacks and the time had come. We hit the Culvers and I got a double cheeseburger deluxe with everything except onions, fries and an ice cream soda. The universe was demanding balance and who was I to deny this. The dog got about half the meat in the burger and more than half the fries, but still it felt dirty and greasy and decadent.
We ate out dinner in a park as the sun was setting, we watched the kids play and the geese land and we relaxed.
We headed home. The dog was passed out in the back, he barely wanted to lift his head until we got home. Once in, we put things away, settled on the couch and watched ‘Clash of the Titans’. What better way to end the evening than with a half naked Harry Hamlin and a claymation medusa battling it out as I dozed.
I got very little rest this weekend. I’m exhausted and I hurt, but this was a good and happy weekend. One of the best I’d had in a long time.
Monthly Archives: April 2005
sacrifique el hígado!!!
yeah, so I have this dog and while I do love him dearly he has cost me an incredible amount of money for a thing so small. Obviously, I don’t begrudge him the cost of his care and feeding, these are to be expected and I want him to be healthy and happy so he gets pricey food and goodly dog treats and more toys than most kids. Beyond these things my dog has still managed to squeeze from me an amazing amount of cash. He chews, he chews a lot and he has this incredible knack for finding those things which actually cost a lot. He has expensive tastes, what can I tell you. Along with the two remote controls, the pillows, the sheets, the clothes, the shoes and the carpet (all the carpet had to be replaced, but to be fair the carpet was old and stained up, but he was the impetus for the replacement), he also chewed up 2 pairs of prescription glasses. So fiday night I went in and had the glasses and the prescription sunglasses replaced. Luckily, they were having a buy one get one free deal going on, but still, i’ve spent so much on glasses this past year it’s not even funny. No, it’s not funny, it’s damned expensive.
ah well, I needed new sunglasses for florida and I needed to replace the regular glasses as I’ve been wearing the ‘funky special occasion’ glasses almost exclusively.
So that was my friday night, dragging David to Pearle Vision to pick out glasses. Um woo? The only sad thing was that I could not get the same pair of sunglasses that I had before as they were hugely expensive, so I went similar but cheaper. I loved those glasses.
Saturday David, Alan and I went to OPH for massive amounts of pancakes and coffee and all that. After, the plan was to clean the house and get ready for the Sunday open house but luckily fate stepped in and we got a call for a showing. We frantically cleaned and straightened things out and grabbed the dog and headed out to spend the rest of the day in the sunshine. So much better to be outside than inside cleaning. We headed northwest ostensible to find the Anoka cat colony, but we never really found it. Instead we explored and drove and ran around. We stopped at a park to let the dog run wild for a bit and he LOVED that. Dogs like to play games or romp or fetch, but Ghengis will shun all these for a full bore, hardcore run. That’s what he loves best, just running like mad.
Then I got the biggest Ghengis scare i’ve had since I got him. He ran up to the semi-frozen pond and in an instant was on an ice chunk, before I could react and call him back he decided to go to the next ice chunk by way of the thin (THIN) sheet of ice between. A split second later he’s under the ice, completely submerged. I thought my heart would stop. With a scream on my lips as I’m running he comes bounding out of the water. He wiped his face all over the grass to get the freezy water off, shook himself off a few times, got a snausage from me and went on his merry way.
Then I cried a little, that quiet relieved cry when the surge of adrenaline seeps out and you’re left feeling a little scared and a lot relieved and when you play it all back you realize that the whole thing took less than a minute and yet every detail adds up to almost an hour.
More driving, exploring, chip eating, laughing, and talking. This is really one of my favorite things to do, get in the car and drive all over the place exploring. We took highway 65 back into town, marvelled at all the ethnic diversity in the restaurants and promised to get up there and sample the food. I don’t know what it is about Central avenue, north of the city but there’s just this huge diveristy, all this stuff going on and you never hear about it. The best part is that things aren’t divided in any way. You don’t have the ‘Indian’ block here and then the ‘East African’ next and the ‘Lebanese’ all bundled together away from the ‘Ukranian’ Corner. It’s all mixed together, one after the other.
We got home, David napped with the dog for a bit and I finished reading my book. The lesson I learned is that if more than one person, completely unrelated people who don’t know each other, tells me that I will not like Robert Heinlein, they are probably right. I read ‘Stranger in a Strange Land’ and I absolutely hated it. HATED. It was terrible. If I had to read ‘Thou art God” one more time I was going to rip the book to shreds. Go take your ‘fish out of water’ innocence and your superior grokking skills and stuff them up your own butt. I also hated the hippie style religious commune orgy bullshit and the ‘we never rush anywhere, we don’t hurry’. Hated.
I also learned that if a lot of unrelated peoplee keep telling me that I will like something I should try it out even if it seems like something I wouldn’t like. I finally saw Monsters Inc this weekend and loved it. I thought it was terribly cute and a lot of fun. Not a masterpiece by any stretch of the imagination but so damned cute and fun to watch. Not as good as Lilo and Stitch, but what can you expect?
In my continuing quest to make vegetarian comfort food (mostly I’m just craving comfort food, it’s what i want to eat and since I have a vegetarian to feed, I have to make comfort food that he can eat) I made a mexican version of shepherd’s pie with tvp. It actually turned out really well, I was happy with it, but I should have added some corn to the base, that would have helped. Yum.
Sunday posted in a bit, I don’t want to make the world’s largest post here!
Chica Mala
And I got the translation I was looking for…
Tú eres el remate de la broma más triste del mundo
Special thanks to David’s roommate, Matt, for the help.
Yeah, so, what’s up my fry babies?
I had this weird bit of musical happiness yesterday. See, I have my iPod and I have my fm transmitter, I seriously love this transmitter, it charges my iPod while I use it so as long as the weather is nice I never have to bring my iPod in except to put new music on it (which I desperately need to do)(also, do not leave your iPod outside over night when it is very very cold, it will not like you so much). Anyway, I make these playlists and I always have 3 or 4 playlists that are almost identical. The first one is huge and the subsequent ones get smaller and smaller as I weed out those things I don’t really want to listen to. Even then, when I get to my pared down version of the playlist the experience goes like this…
skip…skip….skip….maybe..no skip…skip…um…skip…oooooh!
I can name a tune in like 1/2 note, i’m the queen of skipping.
So what I’m saying it that it’s rare for me to actually have two songs in a row that i want to listen to which is damned curious since I made the playlist myself. It also means I need new music.
Yesterday, in an odd turn of events I had 3 (three) (tres) songs in a row that I actually wanted to listed to. ‘Black Cadillacs’ told me to name my children after towns that i’d never been to and to be proud of my hipster heritage, my verb and noun usage. After that I got to ponder assholes and control freaks with Bukowski. So what’s up with the Modest Mouse? I don’t know, they grew on me or something. I always liked them but now they’re getting heavier airplay than before.
Now, I get ready to skip because god knows the idea of a 3 song magic moment isn’t even entering my mind and on comes Staring at the Sun. I’m a HUGE fan of TV on the Radio. The first time I heard them was when I was in DC for New Year’s over a year ago and Mark played them for me. There’s apparently some ongoing debate about whether this song is about orgasm or death (i vote for death) and my first reaction to any debate like that is "What’s the difference?". Then I realize that no one rolls over from death, lights a cigarette and thinks, "yeah, we’ll do THAT again!".
Of course all good things must come to an end and I spent the rest of the trip home flipping through songs.
Went to this last night. Mostly we had gone to see Pablo as David knows him, he hadn’t been to one of his shows in a while, I like his music AND I had yet to see him perform live. He didn’t sing Tina’s Song, but he did sing a song about how you are every childhood story come to life and I thought that was sweet (sadly, the lyrics to that song are not online). The book reading was great as well, she’s a great writer and I do think I’ll be buying the book. The parts she read were visceral and dark and very real.
Then to lighten the mood we headed over to catch "The Life Aquatic" since I am so behind on my movie-seeing. You know, I thought it was okay. Wes Anderson has definitely done better. There were some very beautiful moments, things that visually were very his, but there were also a lot of cheap devices used and obvious tactics employed. The script was not nearly as tight as other movies of his.
I’m looking down the barrel of another very long, not relaxing weekend. I need to get a pair of dog-chewed glasses replaced AND get a new pair of prescription sunglasses to replace the ones that got stolen in chicago. I hate picking thesee out because I can’t see my face in the mirror unless there are lenses in my glasses! Also, pancakes Saturday at OPH in Edina at 9am, for all y’all that keep asking when I’ll go to breakfast with you, this is it. Be there.
oh and…
Memo To the Staff at Symantec, Dublin…
Dáithí is quite possibly one of the most brilliant and confounding minds I’ve ever had the pleasure to tangle with. His razor wit is rivalled only by his taste in trousers. You would do well to listen to his teachings and chew on the meaty gristle of his mind. To disparage the good Mr. M. is to disparage me and to to that will get you a loud, brash, uncouth american punch to the skull. Or something like that.
Jesus D, could I mention you more often?
Alan!! update your damned website or i’ll farmer’s blow into your pancakes.
Stay foamy peeps!