oh happy day
so last night, as i was about to get into sophia's car after checking our mail, my ankle turned and i plummeted chin-first into the floor of the car, cutting my chin, banging my head against the door and twisting my back (i thanked my lucky stars that i hired movers and wouldn't have to deal with lifting things with back pain). this occurred no more than five minutes before i was to begin a full night of packing boxes to move. what did i do instead? i crawled into bed with a biting headache and stayed there until 6:30 this morning at which time i got up and called in sick to work. then i went back to bed.
eventually i got up and began packing. but first i had to be a total dork and clean and arrange our apartment (and even make sophia put a couple of things back) so i could take pictures to commit to memory this last year before everything was dismantled. all day i've had a good flow going, listening to music, taping things up like a pro and not missing work at all. it has barely occurred to me that i'm leaving. right now, it's pouring up here in northwest austin and despite the fact that the movers just started moving sophia because of the rain (they were supposed to start at least an hour ago), i'm so pleased that i got to see a storm here one last time before i left. the wet green valley and overcast sky from my bedroom window are absolutely beautiful.
Things my family likes to do in the Big Easy
Ask the cab driver where he is from (Pakistan) when he got here (February) where he landed (New Orleans) and stress the fact that we do not discriminate against foreign taxi drivers by pointing out that we have a friend from Midland whose last name is Ali and is from Pakistan. (dad)
Dance in the street to music coming out of the bars, go to the Krazy Korner for a 3 for 1 beer special and order Coors Light and then play the washboard sans rhythm along with the band. (mom)
Inquire as to how our daughter could possibly not have the same desire to dance, ask if she missed that gene and then tell her that we'll pay for dance lessons so that she can acquire this desire to dance in the streets. (mom)
Mispronounce every french word possible with utter glee and disregard. Chartres becomes Charters and tete becomes teet. (mom and dad)
Sarcastically ask our mother as she's telling a story how a person can possibly be both handicapped AND in a wheelchair. (amanda) When mom finally continues the story about this handicapped person and then says "She just stood there..." we will ask if she means "sat there" (ross). We will then give each other a high five and giggle for ten minutes. (amanda and ross)
Pay a saxaphone player outside the Cafe du Monde $10 to play "Summertime." (dad)
Use a napkin to clean out our wineglass at Pat O'Brien's and put it in our pocket . (dad)
Order an entire bottle of wine for ourself at an expensive restaurant and have no qualms about telling the waitress that it's just for one person. (dad)
Comment on the competitive prices of feather boas and eye the hot pink ones in every store we pass. (mom)
Buy a fuzzy pink cowboy hat and refuse mardi gras beads from a drunk non-english speaking mexican because we know that we will only throw the beads away. (amanda)
Be the ones who don't want to stay up late and listen to Zydeco music. (amanda and ross)
Ask our daughter everytime we pass the french quarter doesn't she really want to get her tarot cards read before she leaves and laugh about it. (dad)
Become enraged that our son will not take Benadryl for a swollen throat and say "One of these days, you're going to be allergic to something and it will aggravate your asthma and you'll have an attack and if you don't take medicine, you'll die." (mom)
Repeatedly refer to the horse drawing our horse-drawn carriage as "your mule" when talking to the driver. (dad)
Chuckle and point out the motorized female plastic legs swinging in and out of a topless bar to everyone in the family. (dad)
weekend full of the mondays
What a morning. Despite the fact that I didn't sleep enough last night, I got up, got ready and drove to the office at 7 a.m. That twenty minutes made a huge difference. The sun wasn't right in my eyes, the traffic was fine, the morning was cold and I drove down 2222 with the windows down listening to Minus the Bear. For the first time, I sat down at my desk before 7:30. Now I'm eating a wonderful leftover fruit salad with kiwi, mango, strawberry and banana.
So I should probably fill you in on my weekend. Friday I went with my work friends to see Spiderman 2 and watched it from the front row slumped in my chair, head craned and moving from side to side so that I could see the whole screen. I had an awesome glass of sangria and pizza (we were at the Drafthouse). Afterward, I declined to go out because I had to practice before my voice lesson the next morning and that's not so fun to do hung-over. Just as I got home, my friend Dave called me. At this point, I will set forth new names for the two Daves I'm speaking about. This Dave, I will refer to as TDRB. Other Dave (who I will at least say first requested to be referred to as Sexy Dave) is Chopper Dave. So TDRB had driven to New Braunfels to retrieve his keys which he had lost there last weekend and had left him locked out of his apartment. Here's the saga:
On his way to New Braunfels, he decided to take a scenic route from Canyon Lake, which involved driving down Purgatory Road. His tire blew out on Purgatory. He managed to get the spare on (not having had to do this before) and decided that what he really needed was some beer, so he drove to a convenience store at 11:55 where the lady said they stopped selling alcohol at midnight and she'd already closed the register anyway so she wouldn't sell him any and told him all the other stores had probably done the same thing. So he drove home. He soon decided to leave his house, and walked outside, closing the door behind him and realized that he'd left his house key inside. He drove to his friend's house to use the phone and phone book to call a locksmith. Several of the 24-hour locksmiths he called sleepily said they no longer offered round-the-clock services. He finally found one and was leaving to go home, only to find that his spare tire had gone flat.
When TDRB called me, he was sitting outside his house waiting for the locksmith. I offered my car and services for the next day if he needed help getting back and forth in New Braunfels. The next morning, he called me at 9:30 and took me up on my offer, so I left for NB after my voice lesson. We took the wheel and a different tire to a tire place and left them to it. We hadn't eaten all day so we found a little burger place and right after we sat down, it started to pour rain. It was that kind of day. At the tire place, they tried to put another tire on the wheel with much difficulty, because the wheel was messed up and the tire wouldn't seal. In fact, the guy said he could probably make it back to Austin, but he wasn't going to charge him for the work because it wasn't in real great shape. When we put it on the car, you could see the sealant oozing out in a place where it wasn't flush.
Anyway, to make a long story short, TDRB decided to stay in New Braunfels and finish writing his concert reviews (which were late) for Rank and Revue. We were supposed to be going to the premiere of Harold and Kumar go to White Castle in Austin, but he couldn't do it. So I drove back and went with Ashley, Logan and Chopper Dave to the premiere. What fun! We all had lawn chairs and Lone Stars and watched the movie on this huge inflated screen. Ashley was already tipsy and she kept hitting on me and offering me bites of her sliders (from behind me by reaching in front of me and holding out the burger). After the premiere, we headed over to Opal's and hung out, had drinks and shots of Grand Marnier (per Ashley's request), had some very untoward conversation but a good time was had by all.
The next morning, TDRB called me and had lost the air in his tire and pulled into the first parking lot available, which happened to be at a cremation and funeral services business in a very depressing strip mall on far South Congress. We tried to figure out what to do, couldn't find any open tire places who had Volvo tires or even extra spares or a wheel. Nothing was open. Except the junkyard. When someone at Firestone finally suggested we try a junkyard, we found one and trekked around the yard trying to locate a similar Volvo tire. It was sweltering outside and, yet again, neither of us had eaten all day and were starving. We finally found a tire but TDRB didn't want to get it without being sure it would work, so we went and removed the spare and brought it back to see if the bolt pattern matched up. It did, so a guy got the tire off, and TDRB paid his $55 and we went back to the car. It fit. We were very excited, especially TDRB because he didn't have to get a rental car now. So we decided to head to Kerbey Lane South for food and got ready to leave and his car wouldn't move. The brakes had locked. Apparently the tire wasn't right. We then went to a rental place and TDRB got a car and we headed over to Kerbey. I spent the rest of the day recovering from the heat and trying to ignore my sunburn. Neither TDRB or I made it to the concert we were supposed to be covering for Rank and Revue. I'll end now before this post reaches real epic proportions.
shiny happy family
So Saturday my bro and I drove down to the coast to spend the fourth with the parents and my mom's cousin and hubby. We hung out, bullshitted (as our family is prone to do) and told lots of bad jokes. If y'all have been to my apartment, you may have seen a certain photo of a man and woman standing together with their arms around each other with the woman (my mom's cousin) wearing a shirt that says Got Woody? with woody woodpecker next to it. The punchline that you may not be aware of is that her husband's name is Woody. Just this weekend, I got to hear an interesting little story about their honeymoon. Turns out they were very excited when my parents invited them to South Padre Island. No one really understood what was so exciting about it. I mean the beach is great and everything, but it's just a beach and they've lived minutes from Galveston together for twenty-five years. Well it turns out that the day they got married, they had some kind of altercation with the cops and ended up in jail. So they never got to go to South Padre for their honeymoon.
Sunday, I woke up and watched "Say Anything" and came to the conclusion that the scene of Diane Cort's father having a breakdown in the bathtub is completely extraneous. Even tainted my enjoyment of the boombox scene in the driveway. We went to the beach, saw lots of large trucks and cheap beer and one tent set up on the beach had a Redneck Windchime with Bud Light cans hanging in a line clanging against each other. Ross and I decided to head back to Austin that evening rather than sit around at the condo watching TV. However, we did leave with some things, as often happens after leaving my parents. I returned home with a bottle of white wine, a mango, three Fredericksburg peaches, homemade blueberry jam and some of Woody's spicy gumbo. I love texas.
On Monday, I had a lovely lunch with Dorothy at Chipotle. Then my friend Shelby and I drove out to Lake LBJ because I didnt feel I'd gotten my fair share of water and sun for the weekend. We tried to rally the troops but no one would join us, so we made the drive (a little over an hour) to our little cabin by the lake and got some Coors lights and took the boat out. We drove around for a while with me at the helm and then came back and managed to actually get the boat back into the boat house. Then languorously chilled in the water with those foam noodles till we were tired and hungry and drove into town to get Dairy Queen. It was so relaxing. Has anyone noticed that Dairy Queen seems to be an essentially road trip restaurant?
Then last night was trivia night at Mother Egan's. Dave Y had invited me last week and I couldn't go cuz I was sick and it was rainy outside, but I made it out this week to join some of my co-workers for the trivia blitz. If you've never done this trivia thing, basically there are lots of different teams and you come up with a clever name for your team (we were: Have you ever seen a grown man naked?) and then answer eight rounds of questions relating to pop culture stuff. It's basically like trivial pursuit without the cards, dice and colored pies.
I suck at trivial pursuit.
Luckily, there were lots of humorous people on my team that kept things interesting during the 20 minute lags between rounds where they tallied everyone's scores. And our aussie waitress that frequently brought the wrong drinks if she brought our drinks at all provided ample opportunity for scorn and ridicule. Alright I best get back to the grind. Three trivial details you should know:
Mork and Mindy's baby was named Mirth,
Cher's perfume line is called Uninhibited, and
Celine Dion's singing makes her son cry.
awesome.
true dreams of wichita
so i believe i'm at the end of my four-day run of sickness, missing work and
office space mentality. i've been living almost entirely on sugar-free popsicles and contemplating what it would take for my bosses to let me work from home all while going stir crazy - at home. i found out that my lease is up a week earlier than i thought so i have less than a month to decide if i'm staying in austin, find another apartment if i am, and another job and apartment if i'm not.
i am beginning things, which would be foolish to do if i'm leaving. my website is now up, after many many hours of work by not just me, but my brother ross. if you haven't seen it yet, have a look at
www.aliasgrace.com. last night i went to a meeting for Rank and Revue, a bi-weekly publication which covers the music scene on Red River. i signed up to photograph three concerts this month so i'll be getting published for the first time in a couple of years. i've put the word out with the meeting planner of TIPRO, the association whose conference i photographed last month, that i'm looking for more work. my voice and guitar lessons are progressing in 30-minute increments. so this is what i'm wondering - what more do i have to find in austin to make me content to remain here for the next year until i go to grad school?
i went to the
mike doughty show last night after the meeting. stopped by red-eyed fly first with dave to see sean who is always nice enough to make me amaretto sours and not let me pay for them. he was glad to hear that i will be photographing there and perpetuating good publicity for his bar.
as far as the show, mike doughty was great. i have definitely caught some flack from friends for having not one, but two soul coughing albums. but what can i say? it's funky, unique and just good chill music. and i love the man's voice. if you don't know who i'm talking about, take a moment to recall the
super bon bon song and then try to forget how many times you heard it and go pick up el oso, my favorite album of theirs.
the vibe at this show was the best i'd experienced since ACL last september. mike doughty invited the audience to ask his bandmates questions and joked with them constantly. he had several friends in the audience, one of who threw underwear, not once, but
twice onto the stage. most people were dancing, the beats in his music are hard to ignore. a guy in the front in a black wilco t-shirt was air drumming and singing the words to every song, which i'd expect to see at a john mayer concert, but which was nice to see in such a small venue. another thing which happened which i didnt expect to see at such a small show was him getting catcalls along with the requisite "i love you mike!" from a girl there cuddling her boyfriend. he played some soul coughing stuff, including
circles and
true dreams of wichita and did a couple of covers as well, including
words by duluth band
low, which was great. what more can i say? it was just a nice, happy, intimate show and if i had the funds i'd go back and see him play there tonight too. alright i must go put my party clothes on - everyone have a happy 4th.
