Right around the middle of August, when the post-high school set started straggling back to campus, our Pearl Jam/U2 tickets showed up and I started panicking.

The stress? Was stupid crazy. Not because I have an irrational thing about flying. Nor was it concern over how we were going to swing a very large vacation on relatively short notice. No. I was freaking out because I stopped following Pearl Jam sometime after the Vitology release and I hate, hate, hate going to big concerts where I don't comprehend why the first three notes triggers mass hysteria.

[It's not so much that I have a low threshold for boredom, but more a side effect of being the DD through college. I hate feeling like I'm the only person in a large crowd not having the Best! Time! EvAr! This is especially true when the 15,000 people around me all know the words to all the songs and I'm taking serriptious glances at my watch and hoping the next number is the one hit I know. If I'm going to a concert, if there's going to be that outlay of an arm and a leg, if I have to face Journal Pavillion parking, I want to have that all-out enthusiasm for the band.]

[And going all the way to Hawaii to see Pearl Jam? Even though they're opening for U2? Stress.]

When I explained my issue, Adam was more than happy give a girl a hand. He loaded up my iPod with all of the studio albums (minus, ironically, "Vs." which was the only one I knew backwards and forwards). He gave me four gigs worth of bootleg concerts spanning the last six years. He sent me an e-mail with the subject line of "How To Be a Pearl Jam Fan," which explained The-Dead-Meets-Rocky-Horror audience participation phenomenon that's grown up around the band since they began touring obsessively and also included a handy-dandy list of cues for waving, clapping, fist-throwing and remaining absolutely silent.

[Apparently, if Eddie Vedder pulls out a ukalale, we do not clap.]

He gave me cds stuffed with bootlegs for Bucky. He gave me a copy of the Toronto 2005 encore where Bono came leaping onstage and cameoed on "Rockin' in the Free World." He found a picture of the event and e-mailed it to me. It's now my laptop wallpaper.



[I am a big nerd.]

He gave me all of this and then, because he knows me, he said those magical words. "There will be a test."

I haven't put this much effort into studying since my junior year of college. Every day is an eight hour cram session where I pop into the 500-song-strong Pearl Jam smart list and press play. I've done outside reading (Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly, Wikipedia). I've learned words, learned stories, learned that there is no way I have enough time to learn it all. This is an overview, an introduction, PJ 101.

And Adam wasn't joking when he said there'd be a test. There have been several. He has quizzed me on the first verse of "Betterman" and asked for the Alive trilogy. "Singles" was on Cinemax a couple of weeks ago and he would gasp "OOH!" and then bark at me to name the song. I got "State of Love and Trust," missed "Breath." It felt like I'd failed the midterm.

It would feel like a slog if I didn't enjoy it so damn much. It's like finding a new writer to read and then spending months going through the back catalog, savoring every page. Everyday, there's something new to discover on the iPod. There's a song I've heard a thousand times before that suddenly leaps out at me and requires further study. Last night, I dreamed we were at the concert and they opened with "Once." When I woke up, I remembered my Spanish professor once swore mastery of a language came when you spoke it in your dreams.

And now maybe I've stretched the analogy too far.

Anyway, it occurs to me that with about a month to go before the show, I should be brushing up on my U2, relearning H2DMAB and revisiting "The Joshua Tree" for the pure joy of that record and listening to the moody, brilliant Achtung, Baby. I need to. I will.

Plans for tomorrow:

1. Dentist. Lord have mercy, I don't want to go to the dentist again this year. The root canal/faux tooth ordeal earlier this year was enough, thank you very much. And yet? And yet.

Tomorrow's appointment is nothing bad -- just a cleaning -- but I am still dreading the examination and the head shaking and the pointed questions about my brushing and flossing habits and the inevitable scheduling for the next round of fillings. I hate going to the dentist, even if the dentist is a nice sort of fellow.

2. Voting. I do not care if I'm totally hopped up on novocane and sporting an oozing head wound; I am so voting tomorrow. Early voting's a wonderful innovation, if only that it allows citizens like Adam (who voted last week) to answer the telephone, pause for a moment and then say, "Yeah, I already voted. No, I'm not telling you who/what I voted for," before hanging up with vigor.

I want to vote, and I want to vote before November 7, because that day's going to be hellacious enough without having to take the Election SATs.* So I'm voting tomorrow. If you see me in line with a book or my laptop and I'm looking kind of lumpy-jawed, won't you say hello?

3. Shopping. There's no getting around it. I need new work pants. I need new work shirts. I need new work everything. Hello, Old Navy. Have you missed my credit card?

4. Writing. Maybe this should be #1 on the list, or at the very least, #2, but here it is, below dentist visits and voting and consumerism. But hey! I got some done this weekend! I'm very happy! But I'm not so happy about the inadvertant participation in NaNoWriMo! But if you're taking part in NaNoWriMo, yay! Just, I should be done with the NoWri part before the NoMo part, YouKNo?

Oiph.

*For those of you outside of the 505, we're paper voting this year. Actually, I don't even know if it's the whole of New Mexico using the bubble-sheet-scantron method of ballot-casting or if it's just Bernalillo County reduced to filling in the small bubbles. All I know is that for me, if I want to make democracy my bitch, it will be through special pens and a flashblack to standardized testing.

Awesome.

This is more for me than anything else, but FALL BACK!

Because honestly, I'll forget and tomorrow we'll get up and start wandering around and we'll keep wondering why we're so early for things, we're never early and then sometime after lunch, I'll glance at the paper and see George's annual fall back graphic, and I'll smack my forehead, thus negating the whole "sleep in an extra hour" bit and feeling like an idiot in the process.

Adam's demanding a walk.

Is there anything better than commercials for BBC America melodramas? Drumming soundtracks, attractive-but-not-up-to-US-standards people delivering clunky dialogue with the weight normally reserved for the fourth act of Hamlet? Quick cuts? Flashed graphics? Assurances from American critics YOU WILL LOVE THIS!

I think I could survive just on a TV diet of BBC America and CNN. It wouldn't be a very tasty diet, but I could do it.

*~*~*~*

I'm considering another redesign, which is Adam's cue to start a first draft of his suicide note. I don't think I'd do much past making the blog the front page of Sarah Wolf dot Com and taking down the failed experiments that we will not speak of, but I could be convinced to be more ambitious.

Anything you'd like to see?

A week from today, Albuquerque will have a Pottery Barn.

That's right, people. The Duke City is finally entering the 1990s.

Tidbits . . .

-- I need someone to give me $5,000 so I can have my own private episode of "What Not to Wear," minus the obnoxious American hosts. Heck, if someone wanted to pony up $500, I'd be all about it. Or even just fifty bucks; I'm not that picky right now. Even though I am desperate, desperate for new clothes that don't immeadiately shove me into the "dumpy" category, I have been loathe to spend on myself. Every spare dime is earmarked for the unplanned vacation in six weeks. I can't even justify Target or Old Navy.

Speaking of the unplanned v acation, I do not have much in the way of "resort wear." This could be bad.

-- I need someone to give me $500,000 so I can buy my dream home. It's an arts and crafts "bungalow" near downtown which just landed on the market again and I covet (COVET!) it.

Why, yes, it is worth breaking the tenth commandment. You'd probably covet this house too. It has hardwood floors, wood-framed windows, a front porch and a claw foot tub -- catnip to a girl kicking it in wall-to-wall suburbia. The neighborhood's gorgeous, too with old growth trees, landscaping, grass. No wonder it's $425,000.

The deal-breaker (besides my inability to triple my mortgage payment) is the lack of garage space. We need at least two bays and enough room for tires, tops and tools and this joint only seems to offer on-street parking. I'm sure the imaginary neighbors would just LOVE having the street closed off for WMD tech days.

So no house.

-- Bill Bryson's newest offering, "The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid," is quite an excellent offering and I highly recommend it, though I don't know if it'd reasonate with you quite the same way. For one, my dad probably won't be narrating in your head when you read it. It's the damnest thing. These vignettes of his experiences growing up in the 1950s share the same tone of humor and ruefullness of my father's stories.

For another, I have had a thing for Bill Bryson lately. Since the end of the summer, I've worked through "A Sunburned Country," "Notes from a Small Island," "Neither Here Nor There," "I'm a Stranger Here, Myself," and "A Short History of Nearly Everything." There hasn't been a week since Labor Day when there wasn't at least one Bill Bryson in the bedside table pile. "Thunderbolt Kid" couldn't have come at a better time.

-- The plan is to make tamales from scratch this weekend. I've never actually done this, and it feels like cheating because Tamales Are a Christmas Food and it's not even Halloween yet.

-- The plan also involves making sushi (or at least sushi-esque rolls) this weekend, another culinary parlor trick I've never tried.

-- I am really, really screwed when it comes to the revisions.

-- My parents' cat is the friggin' James Bond of the kitty kingdom. He has to have his Friskies shaken, not stirred. I am not making this up; we discovered it while we were cat-sitting over the weekend. The waddly little beastie won't even touch his din-din until the closest human reaches over, picks up the food bowl and gives it a hearty shake. Only then, when the pointy kibble has been agitated to the top of the heap, will he eat. Damnest thing ever.

And finally,

-- Buttercup still likes the yogurt.

A nice beauty shot of Bucky from this past weekend.



So, the race. Michael Schumacher's last appearance in Formula One. The Race.

When the Williams boys took each other out (or rather, Rosberg took out Webber, sigh) I had the ominous feeling that it would be that kind of race. When Schumi began his post-safety car charge up the field, I was a hopeful -- I'm a sentimentalist; I wanted him to go out with that eigth title -- but then came the tire puncture and the long pit stop and the seventeenth place and the possibility of being lapped by Massa. Fourth place was respectable; admirable. The pass on Kimi was astounding. He went out as close to on top as circumstances allowed, but still . . .

"Bernie pushed the yellow button on his fuel pump."

"You think?"

"Yeah. A red button kablammo would have been too suspicious, and he couldn't just let the #1 red car go to the front of the grid, so he had to play it all cool, see? Like a dog just casually carrying around his leash. A yellow button incident would make it interesting. Just interesting enough. Get the ratings, boost the ad revenue. Except Bernie didn't anticipate Schumi running over Fisi's front wing, but it still played right into his hands. Also, I'm convinced that in addition to the red/yellow button conspiracy, Bernie's also into numerology and prefered the number seven to the number eight and the hell with what Michael wanted."

"It's a little tangled up in that head of yours isn't it?"

"I'm telling you, it was the yellow button of fiddling, just pressed on qualifying."

"Are we still watching?"

"Is Massa still sambaing with eighteen dozen half-dressed Brazilian hotties?"

"Okay, then."

Adam is now 364 days away from his thirties. Let us work through his reaction.

1. Denial. His gift haul included a zombie t-shirt, three Classic Transformers, and stuff which goes "BOOM!"

"I am nine years old," he said at one point.

2. Anger. "Thirty next year -- "

"Quiet, you."

"I'm just sayin', you're gonna be in your thirties in a year, and I met you when you were 19 -- "

"SHUSH IT, SHUSHY!"

"Thir --"

"I WILL KEEEEEEEEL YOU!"

(He does not accomplish that at this time.)

3. Bargaining. "Okay, we can celebrate my birthday, but only if I get toys. Okay? I will get older as long as you let me play with my toys in the privacy of my own home. Right?"

4. Depression. "I'm old. Old-de-old-old. Old. Old and busted. Old."

"You're only twenty-nine."

"Yeah. Next year I'll be really old. Old-de-old-old-old."

(This turns into a ten minute melody of oldness. When he wallows, he does it with vigor.)

And finally . . .

5. Acceptance. "You know what's nice about turning thirty?"

"Whazzat?"

"We get to move beyond the shallowness of our youth, y'know? That pressure to be some white-belted, skinny pant hipster kind of eases back. That'll be nice."

That last bit came a little after midnight while scanning the crowd at Burt's. Of course, this was said as he was wearing his threadless t-shirt, swilling a PBR and hanging out with Mayfield, so I'd take it with a large chunk of salt.



Happy birthday, dude.

(Race reaction coming later. Swearsies.)

First frost.

We closed up the bedroom last night for the first time this fall, shunning the cat to the cold. I woke up at three a.m. to find Adam had pulled the duvet away, leaving me a corner. When I tried to clutch some comforter back, he grunted and rolled. We call this "burritoing." He is the burrito king.

Later in the night, he woke up to heap the bed with extra blankets and saw me uncovered. I am told I whined about the lack of bed clothes ("which you had kicked off! OFF!!" -- a.), he draped me with a couple of quilts and then stayed huddled next to me until his alarm went off.

The cat came in like a rocket when he opened the door this morning. She proceeded to perch on my shoulder and suck all the warmth out of me for half an hour.

Sometimes it's a boring life and an overly simplistic life, but it's my life and I like it.

HEY! Did you send me an e-mail in the last several days? Didja use the contact link at the left? Didja use the mailto function?

If you answered a resounding "YES!" to all of these questions, then please know I did not get those e-mails and I suggest manually entering my addie into the appropriate field.

If you opened up Outlook to send off an electronic missive, only to close it because you didn't want to be called a stalker on the internet, well, okay, but I should tell you I've been reverse-stalking each and every one of you thanks to Sitemeter, and speaking of which, seriously dude at Kent State, don't be hackin' into parking services. Just pay your fine. It's cheaper in the long run.

(I know. My senior English teacher is gnawing on her fist at that run-on sentence. But seriously, this is how I normally talk. It's all "ands" and "buts" and awkward, rambling tangents, all strung together by the overused "seriously.")

That's really all I have to say today. No physical mishaps that saw me rushed to the ER; I have reclaimed my hearty-yet-pretty weed status. No really awesome gossip to repeat. No potentially exciting news. It's been another nice, low-level day in my corner of the Duke City.

Which is just how I like it.



(And hey! Y'know, you should totally e-mail me and say hello. drivinginheels at gmail dot com!)

And then on top of everything else, this morning I fainted while making coffee. Making coffee in my bleach-splattered pajama bottoms. In my dirty kitchen. And then Buttercup came over and licked the cold sweat off my brow, which precludes any effort on my part to redub the episode as a touch of the vapors.

And the week is off to a less-than-dignified start.

"I did not sign up for the delicate flower option," Adam said when I had pulled myself onto the couch and was feeling a little more like myself. "And I don't want the delicate flower retrofit. I want the hearty-yet-pretty weed."

"Like a dandelion?"

"No. Something pretty, but hearty. Like a sunflower. A happy, shiny sunflower."

"Sunflowers aren't weeds."

"Name a hearty-yet-pretty weed."

"I've always liked dandelions."

"And you fell over like one hit with weed-eater. What happened?"

"I mixed a narcotic analgesic with a really decent bottle of ten dollar merlot and slept nine hours. When I stood up, my body had issues and went into safe-boot."

"English, please."

"My normally-low blood pressure plummeted and I got a little woozy."

"Are you sure that's all?"

"Yes."

"Not dying?"

"Nope."

"Not, how should I put this? Incubating a chest burster?"

"No!*"

"Not a delicate flower?"

"Dandelions all the way."

"Promise?"

"Promise not to douse me in Roundup?"

"Mmmkay, then."

I'm fine. I'm normal. I'm just stupid, is all.

The hand's better. Okay, so I'm going to have some bitchin' red spots for the next several weeks, but I've redubbed it the lobster hand. It's fine. I'm fine. I am not a delicate flower.







*And seriously, no e-mails asking anything along the lines of being host to a chestburster, because honestly? No. Seriously. Cut it out. Kisses, --S.

I managed to slop a bowl's worth of steaming hot green chile stew over my right hand this evening, so not only did I scald the living fuck out of my mouse hand, I simulataniously opened all the pores on my wrist, palm and fingers and slopped in thirty zillion gallons of spiced-to-fuck broth.

I cried like the little girl that I am for thirty minutes, and then spent the rest of evening soaking the poor hand in sugar water and/or drenching it in aloe. I'm debating whether or not I could pull off the "I scaled my mouse hand; I can't possibly design for the next week" call to my boss. I'm also debating if I want to take the Vicodin now or later or both.

Both is winning.

Adam insisted it's not actually that bad and suggested I suck it up. When that didn't go over well, he placated me with really decent merlot and a classic Star Trek episode starring Joan Collins. He's good. I can tell.

Also, fucking ow.

Stew was good, though.

I give Adam the same piece of hell daily. That is, I very much enjoy reminding him (neener-neener) that while my family's been parked in New Mexico for generations, he suffered the indignity of being born in Kansas.

Neener-neener.

Seriously. This is the one upper hand I've got. I'm as native as you can get (post Treaty of Guadalupe Hildalgo) and he's . . . well, he's from Kansas.

This is an especially fun game because his parents moved to Albuquerque before he was out of diapers and New Mexico is all he's known. For all intensive purposes, he's a New Mexican through and through; it's just that pesky detail of not being born in the 505 that gets his goat every single time.

So I like to mutter things like "Kansas" and watch the vein in his forehead throb and he likes to counter by proving just how New Mexican he really is. He does this by full embracing the gift of our cuisine.

He was well on his way when I met him a zillion years ago. He was rocking the same chile addiction every other New Mexican has; green chile was slopped onto burgers and eggs and tacos without thinking, the hotter the better. Salsa was used in lieu of ketchup. Traveling outside of the state, he would whimper for Tobasco (handy in a pinch and widely availible).

But then last fall, one of his co-workers brought in fresh chile from his chile garden and Adam decided to make salsa. And I know I've posted pictures upon pictures of his weekly salsaings, but pictures do not begin to convey the quality of his salsa. Spicy and tasty and hot and delicious. His salsa is some of the best I've ever tasted, and I'm not just saying that because he's sitting six inches to my right. The man can make salsa.

From there, he branched into guacamole. And then enchiladas and fajitas and rellenos. Suddenly it was fall again and we had two bushels of chile spread across two freezers and it doesn't seem to be enough. Chile has turned from a preference to a hobby to an obsession.

No, that's an understatement. It's not just the chile. I do believe his quest in life is to make the entire Gardunos' menu from scratch and to make it better. Right now, all we need to do is to attempt bizcochitos and tamales for Christmas, and we'll be set, which is really a subtle, show-off-y way of saying that today we made our own tortillas and sopapillas from scratch.



If you go into Flickr, you'll see all the notes. Believe me, they're silly enough to look at.

Also, I'm too tired to figure out how to tie this into the narrative, so I'll just straight-out pimp this. If you want a piece (heh) of the Wolf chile crazy, check out his mother's block-of-the-month Chili Sampler quilt. You should totally buy it. You should also totally buy one for every other person you know. It is one of the most creative quilt designs I've ever seen and it was thought up by my mother-in-law, which makes it that much more awesome, and also, it's chile. Did I mention that part?

Labels: adam, albuquerque, chile, food, new mexico

Notice the lack of bindi zit! Also now with shorter hair! Bags under eyes still included!



Earlier in the day.

Side one -- track one could be better.

I have a bindi zit. Right there, right between the eyes, an angry (angry, angry) red blotch telling the whole world I'm married and so rockin' the bad skin. Yessireebobo, I don't know what I did last week to piss off the gods, why I'm dealing with this case of strang und derm as it were, but boy howdy, would you pass the Stridex?

As a teenager, I was blessed with clear skin. I had no idea what I had then. I was thin (for me), I had an unlined face, I had clear skin and my hair was permanently set to "shiny." Seriously, my best years? My youth? Totally wasted.

And then my skin has spent the whole of my twenties making up for lost time. Zits constantly! Though, since April I've only had maybe six really painful blemishes, and this is during the peak sunscreen season.

This does not change the bindi zit, or the suborbitals on the forehead and the region of Kuiper belt zits behind my ear (don't ask). It's an epidemic of bad skin. Help, help, help.

Gun to my head, I'd have to say I'm having a reaction either to my moisturizer or chlorine. I've been using Aveeno's Positively Radiant moisturizer with the SPF 30 for six months without any complains, which makes me want to rule this out.

Of course, admitting product means that other women (probably better women, I sometimes think) will fall over themselves to tell me to skip the Aveeno and try a department store's worth of products, and really, thank you. E-mail's at the bottom. Send me your recs!

But really, if it was the moisturizer, I should have three or seven big zits (with root structures) on my throat, because I am a firm believer in protecting the neck.

Which leads me to believe it's the chlorine. I started swimming again last week and I think my skin's staging a full-on rebellion.

Help me, help me, help me.

The swimming's a new/old addition to my continual quest to be healthy, which is always sidelined by my overwhelming nature to say "fuck it," and watch a Mythbusters marathon on Discovery. I don't know about you, but I'm constantly torn between the need to be aesthetically pleasing by current western standards and the need to be okay with myself as I am, and this week the self-loathing, aesthetically seeking side is winning. It's usually winning. Hell, it's always winning.

And now I've got a bindi zit for my troubles.

Woo!

(And just to really add flavor to typing this image-driven, middle-of-the-night posting, I can report that I'm sitting on the couch, surrounded by dark, and I'm so cliched, the cat is snoring. Thank you, thank you. This is one of my finest hours.)

Much to Adam's glee, the balloon fiesta's been a washout for two days running.

I don't understand why the organizers of the fiesta don't just up and move the event by a week or two. I'm sure it has to do with someone whining "but it's tradition" and then pointing to the calendar. Second week of October. It's tradition. Yeah, and every Duke City resident knows that during the second week of October, it's going to rain. It's goning to rain a lot. If it doesn't rain, if the heavens smile upon us and the sun remains out for ten straight days, it's still going to be tear-the-swamp-cooler-off-the-roof windy.

And the "but it's tradition" argument? Not working. As I see it, the only fixed events on the gregorian calendar should be days of national independence (or regicide, depending upon where you live), scientific season markers and celebrations for the birth of particular dieties, and even that last one has been tampered with in the intervening 2000 years.

Everything's flexible, is what I'm saying. There's no need to have a city full of sodden Germans wandering around, trying to fill the hours until the next launch.

(I don't know what is with me and the German tourist imagery when it comes to the fiesta, but when you say "hot air balloons" I think of a group of drunk, balloon-pin-bedecked Germans in the back of Gardunos hoisting their Warsteiners and being generally obnoxious. This was my introduction to the balloon fiesta ten years ago, and European obnoxiousness sticks with a girl, apparently.)

(Nothing against the Germans as a whole. You are lovely people; some of my best friends are German, though they got here by way of escaping the Kaiser, and maybe I should just shut up now.)

So, c'mon event planners! Let's give the fiesta a gentle nudge on the calendar. Whaddya say?

*~*~*~*

The F1 race was jaw-dropping. Adam was zonked on the couch and I was struggling to stay awake when Schumacher's engine done blowed up. I was so shocked, I started hollering at the television and roused Adam long enough to relinquish the Tivo remote, so I could run it back and show it to him.

"We've never seen that!" he shouted when he realized why I was making him watch the race instead of sleep through it. "We've never seen Michael's engine let go! Oh my GOD! Bernie pushed the button on Michael!"

Yes, we're still buying into the red button/yellow button theory.

Anyway. Aside from Michael's kablammo, there was even more disappointment to be had in Webber's tire wall mishap, Scott Speed's retirment and I still have no idea what happened to DC (Wiki's reporting a gearbox failure. Sigh). And next year, the show moves to Mt. Fuji, which bums me right out. Suzuka is one of my favorite tracks.

On the plus side, Kimi, despite saying his car couldn't do it, was impressive with his finish (hee!). He's grown on me this season. I wish him well at Ferarri next year.

But I am annoyed, I admit, that the title chase has been extended to Brazil. I know it's exciting and it'll draw in viewers and nobody could orchestrate a better season ender, and yeah. I don't do well with suspense, and you know this season will end with a photo finish. As to which driver wins, well, I guess that's all up to Bernie, isn't it? Which ending he go with? The youg upstart besting the seasoned veteran? Or the mega-happy ending where the retiring hero wins just one more title.

Get back to me in two weeks.

Approximately 812,478.

Sigh.

There may have been a very serious lapse in judgement.

I had to make a post-work grocery run and I was exhausted. I was so tired, the Samsonites under my eyes were aching; I bought $42 worth of crap, but not the two items I actually needed. Screw tired; let's kick it up to exhausted. Ex-HOUSE-ted - exhausted.

But now, in hindsight, shotgunning that Red Bull probably wasn't a stroke of brillance, because now I'm a jittery ball of nerves with nothing to do. Actually, I do have some things I could do, but keeping the hands steady would probably be an issue. Jittery. Bounce, bounce, bounce.

I'm praying for the hardcore crash in the next forty-five minutes, because I'm terrified I'll be wide awake at 3 a.m., staring at the ceiling and counting the minutes until I turn 30.

And if I'm wide awake at 3 a.m., I promise I'll do something productive.

Oh, but before I go and do something useful, can we all mock the "light display" on the crest? When I first heard about the plan to dot the crest with LEDs, I imagined the vulgarity of Vegas besmerching my beloved mountains. But when I checked at 9:00 and again at 9:30, all it looked like was, um, LEDs dotting the crest.

Happy 300th birthday, Albuquerque. Here's your crappy present . . . please don't ask what it cost.

ETA: Stuart Dyson delivers with the snarktastic standup on Channel 4, referencing aliens demanding a meeting with King Bill (they're not), or Boy Scouts parked on La Luz, holding flashlights (they're not) and letting the unwashed masses say how awesome the lights are (they're not).

Stuart Dyson is always one of my favorite local news personalities. Rock on, Dyson.

It'd be much more satisfying if, when ripping apart four hundred electronic pages, the computer provided the appropriate sound effects. It could be a mix mix between paper being torn and the noise that preceeds the split-second realization that today was not the best day to wear the spaceship underpants. Just, with every cut, the drawn-out "R-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-P!"

"What's the deal with the ferret voting?"

So glad you asked. We need to flashback!

(It is now two weeks ago.)

To: Sarah
From: Adam
What are we doing this weekend?

To: Adam
From: Sarah
I kind of like the idea of spending all day in the comfy bed. Of course, that would require us spending hours training the cat and Buttercup to fetch us coffee and then beer, which wouldn't work, because Buttercup's fake ID puts her age at 67 and I don't think they're gonna buy that.

To: Sarah
From: Adam
I hesitate to ask, but why is Buttercup 67 years old?

To: Adam
From: Sarah
"So I can vote."

To: Sarah
From: Adam
That's adorable. But, um, no more "Breakfast Club" for the woozles, m'kay?

To: Adam
From: Sarah
Can you see Buttercup going up to the polling place? "One, please."

To: Sarah
From: Adam
The old ladies would probably let her vote, too.

To: Adam
From: Sarah
She'd get up to the booth and consider all the buttons, and then she'd inadvertantly vote in the Baby Eating Party of America because of the shiny, shiny buttons.

To: Sarah
From: Adam
*DING DING DING DING DING DING DING DING DING!!!!!* "Ma'am? You can only press the vote button once."

To: Adam
From: Sarah
Nah, this is New Mexico. They wouldn't even notice. Voter fraud's part of the fun. But we have to take her with us on election day now.

To: Sarah
From: Adam
One Baby Eat Party of America straight ticket coming up, even though, given her diet, she's more of a granola hippie.

To: Adam
From: Sarah
"Make yogurt, not war!"

To: Sarah
From: Adam
Snarf!

Labels: ferrets, voting

I know. It's a total "oh, c'mon!" moment. I haven't been flying solo for twelve hours and Buttercup got a Myspace page. Apparently, I'm one of those people.

But before I turned into one of those people, we watched the race and Adam devised the theory of the yellow button. F1 conspiracy buffs (by which I mean all two of the F1 fans I know) buy into the red button -- a button controlled by Bernie Ecks that, when pressed, blows up engines. This is also known as the kablammo button.

The yellow button come into play at pit stops. Gun misfires? Fuel mishaps? That's just someone (BERNIE!) hitting the yellow button.

I mean, we all know what's coming, right? A high stakes race at Suzuka on Saturday night where we'll see a maybe two point difference, followed by the annual washout at Brazil where the commentary will be "as the points stand now" for seventy fuckin' laps.

Smart money says Schumacher will win his eighth world championship and Fred will look bitchy in the interview room. And if Schumi doesn't wrap up on top? You know there's gonna be a phone call answered "Hello, Maclaren."

God help me, I still love the sport, even with the yellow buttons, the red buttons, the tire regulations and the tech changes on the horizon. I love Formula One.

Adam's been out of the house for less than three hours and what happens?

Buttercup has a Myspace page.