Driving in Heels

2008-09-06T21:31:00.000-07:00

By the middle of August, the tomato plant had only coughed up three tiny, tough-skinned babies. Still, it was a marvel to us to watch something -- anything -- move from seed to bearing fruit, so we would go out every evening after work just to check on those three little green globes, to praise them and water them and urge them along. Finally, during the last week of the Olympics, they were ready to eat.

And now, it's the beginning of September. The State Fair is underway and I'm dying to have Food on a Stick, and suddenly we have three dozen baby tomatoes, with more buds threatening to sprout. Just like everything else in this life, the timing is completely off, and I'm wondering if we'll be able to harvest any of the newest fruit before it cools down.

Scenes from an election

2008-06-22T20:05:00.000-07:00

"Hi, I'm calling with the [name redacted] campaign and I was hoping to urge you and your husband to come out and volunteer."

"Dude, we live in the third congressional district."

"Are you serious?"

"Yeah."

"But that's on the West Side."

"We're self-loathing."

"Wow. Are you sure you live in district three?"

"Was the primary three weeks ago?"

"Oh. Dude. You should move."

"Tell me about it."

::click::

2008-05-02T23:18:00.000-07:00

I gave my notice at the last gig a year ago today. A year ago today, I was about 95% certain I had made a huge, GOB-like mistake. I even came up with a contingency plan that involved welding and/or cupcakes.

I'm so glad it didn't come to that. I mean, so, so glad.

2008-04-26T21:39:00.000-07:00

So. I'm thirty.

Not much of a change from twenty-nine. That's the blessing of being born middle aged, I suppose, though I did bounce around on Wednesday, threatening to live up the final hours of my impetuous youth by getting a tattoo, quitting my job and chunking the mortgage to live as an olive farmer on some Greek island.

And then I ran out of time and entered the fourth decade tattoo free and still gainfully employed in Albuquerque.

If thirty is even half as fun as twenty-nine was, it's going to be sincerely awesome.

2008-03-16T21:32:00.000-07:00

Lot of talk about traction control this weekend.

In Formula One -- traction control's gone this year, which meant watching Kimi go skittering across the kitty litter countless times.

In my life -- I turn thirty in five weeks. There's a definite slide out of my twenties that's unnerving as all hell.

I'm more comfortable talking about Formula One, so . . .

That was a hell of a kick-off race. Three safety car periods -- one of which featured Whozits in the Williams bunging up his Formula One debut royally, another which featured the stupidity of the new Honda chief mechanic and the beginning of Ross Braun's season-long headache -- Linda winning, Nico looking pleased and the amazing run for Toro Rosso before the car broke. Exciting! Exciting enough to keep me from being lulled to sleep by the gentle hum of 19,000 RPMs! That's great!

Heck, there was even some passing -- this could be a fine season for racing.

But it was all about the loss of launch control, of traction control. From the shakeout of this race, the boys who grew up karting (and who aren't far removed from karting) are probably going to have an easier time adapting than the guys who've been playing the role of human analog in the engineer-driven hyper expensive RC cars of seasons gone by. (I mean, do you remember DC's Monaco 2002 win? That'll never happen again.) I think once the middle-level veterans get comfortable with the car, they'll be back in business. Fred's got a chance to climb back up -- the car's not spectacular, but he seemed to be showing a bit of the fight. A bit.

Bahrain in a week will prove me wrong or prove me right. I'm just glad it's back; it's been a very long off-season.

2008-03-03T19:57:00.000-08:00

One that I wish came from the Wayback Machine, 2005 version:

Man, I friggin' heart XM radio! Specifically, I heart Lucy because she keeps me in all 90s alternative, all the time.

I'm turning thirty in April, one of those gasp-inducing birthdays that has me examining my skin every night and using the anti-wrinkle cream and sneering at the Jonah Brothers for being too pretty, too packaged and too friggin' young. "They don't know what real music even sounds like!" I rail at the husband, because he's just about the only person who I rail at these days. "Damn whippersnappers!"

He would agree and then we'd go back into the archives of our iPods, listening to another Pearl Jam bootleg and wishing it was still 1995.

And then we discovered Lucy. Like I said, I completely heart her.

Lucy keeps me awash in the music I was listening to when I first moved up here and discovered radio beyond the two-honky-tonk-station town I had grown up here. Lucy is The Edge, when The Edge was 107.9 FM. Lucy is the soundtrack of my college years, when I lived in a tiny dorm room and caught up on the music of the first Clinton administration. Man. Lucy is that mirror into who I was when turning 30 was waaaaaaaaay down the road, when the world was my oyster and possibilities were endless.

(It's quite possible that that Sarah would be dismayed to meet me, but that's her problem.)

Lucy is also the answer to the question the husband posed to me a few weeks ago, before we knew of Lucy's existence, which was "So, when we're old and Nirvana's been classified as ancient history and is played only on oldies radio, are we going to listen to that station incessantly?"

Well, yeah.

Lucy, you rock.

2008-02-21T20:33:00.001-08:00

Adam took that. I cannot believe how friggin' awesome it is.

2008-02-10T19:36:00.000-08:00

"You never update," a friend says. "Seriously. I go, and there's that 'dark vision' picture of a couple of twisted cottonwoods in the bosque, and it's so old it's moldy. You. Need. To. Update."

There's a finger in my sternum as this said. "You need to update." Poke, poke, poke.

I make the mistake of asking what they'd like to see here. "Anything. What's up with the job? What's up with the book? What's up with your life?"

Well, I suppose that's not too much to answer.

My job's great. I still have no problem letting people think that I'm a ninja. I still don't feel like discussing it on teh intarwebs -- I'm not sure if this is because I'm mature, if it's due to the "don't discuss your job" clause in my employment agreement or if I'm just wary of the almighty Google -- but it's a great gig. It's still a complete 180 degrees from my last situation, and that's a good thing. It's still awesome.

The book is now being described as a comedy of manners set in Albuquerque -- with aliens.

Life's great, and that's probably the biggest explanation as to why the site's been decorated with moldy old cottonwoods. I'm busy living.

It's great right now. I expect it to crash and burn at any moment.

2007-11-09T21:36:00.000-08:00

Oh.

Um.

Hi.

Let's pretend like instead of getting married and landing a journalism job, I instead moved to LA seven years ago and found a life in the WGA, and thus, I am currently on strike (and have been since, um, September), and I am really serious about Pencils Down.

And if that doesn't work, here is a picture of the bosque. Isn't that soothing?

Sorry. I'll try to be more update-y.

2007-09-23T20:20:00.001-07:00

I have introduced Adam to the joys of "My Fair Lady," which he had somehow escaped for the past 30 years.

He was absolutely enchanted by it.

"Look at the costumes! Look at the sets! Listen to the songs? How have I not seen this before?"

I love that I can introduce him to this and he, in turn, can introduce me to such equally enchanting films such as Alien or Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.

2007-09-15T18:52:00.000-07:00

Colin Mcrae is dead. It is almost impossible to fathom the idea.

2007-09-15T15:08:00.000-07:00

Oh. Em. Gee. Nikon D40 goodness.

I am so in love. Also with that guy.

2007-08-30T21:17:00.000-07:00

So, apart from getting waylaid by the sad woman with her sad story in Barnes & Noble last weekend, I also managed to get a little book shopping in.

Actually, it wasn't shopping so much as it was replacement. Several times in the last couple of weeks, I had gone into the upstairs book-o-teria and book-bookery that is the home office in search of either Gone with the Wind (Every time I pick it up, I mean to read it with a critical eye, and every time, I fail -- but damn it, I was going to try again) or Pride and Prejudice, and both books, both beloved copies were missing.

I looked everywhere. I mean, EVERYWHERE for either one, and came up with bupkis, so we went trooping off to the bookstore for replacements.

And now, if you looked at my nightstand, you'd get a snapshot of who I am these days: Jane Austen stacked on top of Margaret Mitchell stacked on top of Harper Lee stacked on top of J.K. Rowling, with Sarah Vowell and Abraham Lincoln (the man himself) leaning in on the action, all covering up the secret shame of a woman's glossy and a doorstopper work of English chicklit.

I finished Pride and Prejudice the night I bought it, and I've been working my way through GwtW on my own, while reading a bit of Harry Potter (Sorcerer's Stone) out loud to Adam every night, while the rest I pick up at random, open somewhere in the middle and just read.

I can't believe a quarter of the American population is missing out on this joy. Really, it breaks my heart.

2007-08-26T19:30:00.000-07:00

In another one of those vaguely alarming, cliché-riddled blog posts, I have to tell you that I'm becoming more and more like my mother every day.

Today's illustration of this slow, lifelong metamorphosis comes via a trip to Barnes & Noble, where a very distressed middle aged woman interrupted my reading to ask for help writing a letter to her incarcerated niece.

There was a brief out-of-body experience as I stood there, listening to the horrors that had befallen this family. I watched myself shoulder my handbag, murmur "how horrifying" when prompted and cover my mouth at the shock of it all (and really, it wasn't shocking, it was just depressing -- another boyfriend shaking another baby to death). I listened to myself dictate a few simple sentences. I watched myself give up the name of the only public defender I know, and I realized I had just had my passport stamped for Iammymomonia.

This happens all the time to my mom. She'll be going about her day, and some random, downtrodden person will corner her with a tale of woe, and my mother -- being the kind hearted person she is -- will dole out advice and sympathy for as long as it takes, or until Dad extracts her from the scene. This has happened to her for years. I think it's because my mother has a very sympathetic, gentle face, one which exudes a particular warmth of character that seems so lacking in this world.

And now I made her sound like she's radioactive. I am an awesome daughter.

It's not that this was the first time I've had a stranger talk to me, it's just that I tend to bring out the latent asshole in your average Johnny on the Spot. "That's a gay little car you drive," or "You'd be kind of pretty if you lost some weight," or from earlier today, "What kind of meanhearted person doesn't give a dollar to little babies?" (because I declined adding a buck to my total at Walgreens for whatever children's charity they were peddling today). And usually, I can be counted to be an ass right back -- tell me, did you lovingly fondle the Bumpernutz before you installed them? -- but when this woman started pouring out her heart, I couldn't bring myself to be a stone-cold bitch. I stood there, I listened, I offered suggestions and sympathy until Adam came to hook me away.

"Don't turn into your mother," he scolded.

Too late.

And really, I can't say it's a bad way to be.

2007-08-16T20:54:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure what's nerdier: my desire to dress up for Halloween, or my desire to dress up as Arachnia, Queen of the Spider People and Bride of Chaotica.

2007-08-12T10:15:00.000-07:00

Parts of posts I will never make (but should):

* Kittens. In the office. Ohemgee, dude. At one point, my co-worker had a phone in one hand and a kitty in the other, and even though I could hear the client yelling at her, she wore this expression of complete bliss because KITTEN. Seriously. And then the next day, someone brought around their brand new baby for free snuggles.

I don't work in Corporate America. I work in Happy Land.

* "[This band] sounds like the Electric Teeth, except angry. With Rolf singing."

"After many tequilas and 'luudes -- also, he shanked Dr. Teeth on the bus in a desperate bid for stardom."

"The shanking came he had the epiphany that 'Dr. Teeth' is just a euphemism for 'dentist.'"

"Rolf had a traumatic experience with dentists as a young pup."

"Haven't we all?"

* So, we're following this drizzled yellow paint line down 7th between Silver and Gold, and I'm still convinced that this could be one of those coincidences, when Adam shows me where the line slaloms through the line of parking meters, which is when I concede that okay, it's fucking with him.

* I'm not sure which is the most unsettling bit: that I have a little bit of a crush on Sushi Guy, or that Adam is okay with the crush on Sushi Guy and maintains that Sushi Guy reciprocates, or that when we went in for dinner yesterday, Sushi Guy noticed my hair and said it looked good. Please notice that in all of this, I am not disturbed by how much sushi we've been eating.

* I'm standing there in the dress repeating to myself, "this is Diane Von Furstenberg, it is a size eight, and you friggin' FIT it," myself can't help but point out, "it's still a sack."

I bought it anyway, because I am weak. Also, did I mention my formerly-sized 22 ass fit into something in the single digits? Yeah, I am that shallow.

* And now I'm in the market for a used Mini Cooper S.

* Seriously, anyone want a house on the West Side?

* And that's how I finished my first pair of socks.

SPOILERS!

2007-07-22T18:35:00.000-07:00

"So, where are you in Harry Potter and the Mountain of Magical Cash?"

"It's his birthday."

"Wasn't Ginny's birthday present awesome? She was totally going to give it up to him."

"...I haven't gotten that far, woman."

"Oh. Sorry."

"Damnit. Every book. EVERY BOOK, you've got to spoil it."

"I didn't really spoil --"

"Eh, eh, EH! There will be no more mention of it."

"But--"

"EH! I am putting my foot down. The foot is down. You cannot talk about the book until I am finished, do I make myself clear, wo-man?"

"...totally going to give it up."

"I hate you so very much."

2007-07-20T22:20:00.000-07:00

Weekend plans:

1. Buy Harry Potter.
2. Sleep.
3. Read Harry Potter.
3. Sleep.
4. Maybe eat somewhere in there.
5. Pull in a little OT.
6. Finish Harry Potter if I haven't gotten around to it already.

You?

2007-07-18T09:06:00.000-07:00

The new job has officially staked its claim in my psyche. This was determined when I came out of a dead sleep at 5 a.m. realizing I hadn't done a thing for a thing and immediately threw on some jeans and made a run to the office to do the thing for the thing.

And hey, new discovery. East-bound traffic on Paseo is surprisingly heavy at 5:20 a.m.

It took the better part of a year of employment at the Journal before I was struck with that sort of panic. I don't know if it's a difference in duties, or a difference in maturity levels or what, but there I was at 5 a.m., cruising into the office in dirty jeans and a hoodie, startling the night crew. "You could have just called. We could have done the thing for the thing for you," they assured me. And yeah, I could have and they could have, but it seemed important to own the panic. Also, I couldn't remember which thing didn't have the thing done to it, and like hell was I going to be on the phone with a coworker I don't know saying, "No, not that thing. Try the other thing." That would have just cemented my reputation as a flake with those people.

New jobs. Ah, aren't they a gas?

2007-07-17T09:00:00.000-07:00

The last month has been kind of a run up of pointed questions in the direction of "it's been over a year, when are you going to have that damn book finished?" from a couple of different sources, some whom are kind of hoping I finished or will finish in the near future, so they might actually get a little cash out of my chaos, and some whom (bless them) just want something to read.

I can only answer the same way my father answered the road trip standard of "are we there yet?"

We will get there when we get there.

Just, FYI.

2007-07-16T08:16:00.001-07:00

Someone in the house has gout.

I am not at liberty to name the person rocking a bitching case of the disease of kings, but I can tell you it's not me. It's also not Peanut, nor Buttercup. And it's definitely not the cat.

So. Gout.

In the run up to the diagnosis, I had noticed the New York Times had been going on an everyone-eats-together rampage in the Style/Food section, and I was happy to agree. I said to the gout patient (before we knew there was a gout patient in the house) that, aside from nights where I breeze in from work at bedtime, we would be a family that made one meal for dinner, period. The gout patient had no problem with that. We're not a house of picky eaters, even with my protein-crazed eating habits.

Except then Gout showed up with a full suitcase and now I'm having to go back on everything I said.

For one, Gout does not get along with my personal health plan. Strike that. Gout LURVES my personal health plan. More meat, Gout says. Moooooore meat! And salt! And dried legumes such as peanuts! Oh, and foie gras! Oh, Gout loves foie gras.

Not that we have access to that particular gout bomb, but hey.

I spent the weekend consulting Dr. Google and running back and forth to the grocery store for more fresh fruit (Gout and the fresh fruit? Not so much) while the gout patient hydrated and experimented with his new Super Strength NSAID of loopiness. And I've started dealing with the fact that for the time being, we're a two-dinner family.

Gah. Stupid gout.

2007-06-25T08:11:00.000-07:00

My first clue should have been the Sevens.

On my first day at the new gig, I noticed that almost every other woman in the office was wearing a pair of Sevens. Or Citizens. Or Paper. Or Rock. Or Chip. Or Paige. Or whatever. There was a lot of premium denim stalking around the floor.

I didn't think much of it at the time, except to have the standard intimidation flare-up that has been ground in since childhood, when the wealthy kids all wore Guess? and I wore pre-Mizrahi Target and was unmercifully harassed for being a huge nerd. (The sad childhood rears its ugly head again, but hey! It'll pay off in the end!)

There was also a five-minute window where I regretted being too skinny for my pair of rescued-from-Buffalo-Exchange-five-minutes-after-Christmas-and-they're-probably-knock-offs Sevens, because I am a freak. But the moment passed, I was thrown into training and the issue subsided.

Until I got paid.

Holy mother of Prime.

And yeah, I assumed the first check was a glitch to compensate for working three weeks before getting paid, but then they paid me again, and suddenly that "poor in finances but rich in spirit" is starting to not hang as well, and it occurs to me that I should elevate my sartorial game accordingly. Dress for the job you want, and all that.

But when I am afforded an opportunity to run amok in Nordstroms, do I? Heck, no. That would mean letting go of some of this newfound cash (which would make most middle class types weep, but shut up, it's big to me) and my mother raised me to never touch capital if I could help it, and yeah, while this is good advice for the uberwealthy, it's probably not applicable here, and I still think shopping at the Gap is decadent.

So I'm taking baby steps. And baby steps involve ordering a pair of Kenneth Cole Reaction slingbacks off the Nordstroms website (marked down 50%). We're building a kickass business casual wardrobe from the heels up, and if that wardrobe includes outrageously overpriced jeans, well, I'm sure I'll have the appropriate panic attack upon purchase.

But, ah, I think I'm going to maybe stick that money into savings instead, because I'm still a big honkin' sensible nerd at heart.

2007-05-30T20:06:00.000-07:00

Oh, the new job is lots of fun!

It's life-consuming, but it's interesting and challenging (and you thought those were just meaningless words tossed around interviews), which translate into "fun" for my nerdy (not so) little noggin. I get to study! And they've given me homework! And quizzes! And I get paid! It's like school! But with with paychecks and benefits!

Next week, I'll be released into the wild -- tagged and monitored, of course. The week after that, I'll be run through orientation. The week after that, previously scheduled vacation will wash the newly acquired knowledge away.

I'm giving it another month before I feel steady enough to develop the daily rhythm for the new gig, and another month after that before it feels less like summer school (or summer camp) and more like a career.

Maybe.

2007-05-23T08:20:00.000-07:00

Today is day three of the new job.

Adam: It's the third day. You know what that means?
Sarah: I have to put out?
Adam: . . . We've been together too long.
Sarah: Yeah.

The job is interesting, and eventually they'll let me do it, but the past two days have involved HR paperwork and watching coworkers with longer tenure work. Eight hours. Of watching other people type. And since I'm not stalking anyone of them, it's not as compelling as it could be.

But it'll get better. Today they're letting me file!

The job doesn't quite feel like the job yet. I'm only about 1000 yards from the Journal, and I've had to make a concentrated effort to not turn into the editorial parking lot each time I've driven past. I keep bumping into former co-workers at Starbucks, and keep referring to my time at the Journal in the present tense. "On my desk, we do this" for example -- which makes it sound like I've died and this is the afterlife.

But let's not compare the new job to death. Let's compare it to attending camp: it's summer, it's an activity to get me out of the house and it's not school, but it doesn't feel real.

It'll feel real eventually.

And now, to follow in the footsteps of every other Albuquerque blogger, I give you the WaPo critique!

Washington Post reporter Sridhar Pappu opened a profile on former US Attorney David Iglesias thusly:

At 9 a.m. on the very edge of the dusty, desolate collection of adobe homes and Vietnamese restaurants that seem to form this city, David Iglesias begins his run through the foothills of the Sandia Mountains. This is not easy terrain. The footing is terribly uneven. The altitude can be unbearable. At certain times one can hear the grumbling of mountain lions and the feasting of coyotes.

There are so many things wrong with this lede. Like, dusty? Only in days ending in -y, but is that a problem? Desolate -- I don't think that word means what Sridhar Pappu thinks it means.

Webster's defines it thusly:

1 : devoid of inhabitants and visitors
[That booming population of 750,000? Is all in your MIND!]

2 : joyless, disconsolate, and sorrowful through or as if through separation from a loved one [I'm guessing that to someone from the east coast, we could all be mourning separation from using water with reckless abandon, but c'mon.]

3 a : showing the effects of abandonment and neglect : DILAPIDATED b : BARREN, LIFELESS c : devoid of warmth, comfort, or hope : GLOOMY desolate memories>
[No, no, it's a desert, no.]

And then he hits the pervasive stereotypes of Albuquerque: adobe houses and . . . Vietnamese restaurants?

That's a new one.

The lede further descends into histrionics with the unbearable altitude, and the descriptions of animal noises. Oh, man. Mountain lions scream, dude. The scream sounds like a woman. I know this, because there was a mountain lion den near my childhood neighborhood, and they liked to let loose with blood-curdling screams when they were picking off the house pets.

And the sound of a coyote feasting is less yummy huffing noises and more yummy huffing noises coming out of a city-issued garbage can. With loud thumping thrown in for good measure. Like a happy puppy rolling in trash, only not quite.

Or at least, that's how the west side coyotes roll.

I appreciate the reporter's attempt to throw in some local color, to transport readers to the Duke City and give them a glimpse of life in Albuquerque, but seriously, that version of Albuquerque is totally unrecognizable to the locals, and damn off-putting to anyone who has never bothered leaving the beltway.

Which means, now that I'm in the new job, I can say this:

Damn journalists. Always get it wrong.

2007-05-10T18:10:00.000-07:00

I know. Neglectful.

So, I quit my job. That was the big hush-hush, don't-jinx-it news. Maybe it's not the hush-hush, don't-jinx-it news that everyone is hoping for, but hey! New job! New challenges! New title!

I know!

I'll be an assistant editor for an unnamed company, which means I'll actually use the English degree for professional gain and profit. If I could, I would line up every person who warned me off the major and perform a version of the "I Told You So" dance tailored to their specifications. For instance, my dad's version would go, "I told you so, I told you so, I-I-I told you so, that'll be fifty bucks, please" with some Cabbage Patching thrown in for good measure.

It's almost enough incentive to dig out the sheepskin, wipe off that questionable brown spot and frame it.

Almost.

Now I just need to survive my last week at the Journal without falling apart into a gooey puddle of panic. I've spent the last nine years here. Nine. Years. I don't know any other professional life.

Yeah, I'll get over it.

2007-05-04T22:15:00.000-07:00

Changes are afoot. Big changes. Little changes. Changes which mostly involve collecting boxes and wondering where all this crap came from, anyway.

I need me some Bowie.

2007-04-28T13:00:00.000-07:00

It is shameful how long I've gone without a proper entry. Sorry about that.

Since the last time I posted something meaningful, I turned twenty-nine. And if you'll pretend I'm wallowing in angst about the Last Year of My Twenties, I'll pretend like I'm wallowing in the Last Year of My Twenties and we'll both ignore the fact that Flickr has completely taken over my life.

But life continues to go on. We're still having the same debate between selling the house and waiting out the recession here; switching jobs, switching cities, switching countries. We're still playing with cars and cameras and making salsa and baking cupcakes. I'm making a batch of chocolate peanut butter cupcakes right now; I'm just letting the batter rest for a minute.

I apologize for wandering off; there was something shiny on the other side of the internet. So please, tell me how you've been, and what you've been up to. I'd like to know.

2007-04-22T14:48:00.000-07:00

I had a nap. Now I'm contemplating another nap. These lazy Sundays are just packed.

2007-04-20T22:37:00.000-07:00

For the sake of my sanity, let's pretend that Flickr is my blog this week.

Or I could talk about my haircut. For hours.

2007-04-18T09:43:00.000-07:00

So. I got a haircut, and for the first time ever, I had a stylist who understood the fivehead and who suggested a solution for masking the bulging real estate above my eyebrows.

Before. Long hunks of hair that just hung there. A slope of cranial space that Hillary wouldn't have dared attempted.

Now? I should smile more. But just look at that demure forehead! Why, it's only verging on a fivehead.

2007-04-17T06:16:00.000-07:00

My thoughts continue go out to everyone whose lives were shattered by the events yesterday.

I say continue, because my mind hasn't let go of what has happened. The post-horror insomnia has set in. After a decade working in this business, you'd think I'd be calloused -- hell, you'd think I'd remember to knock back a sleeping pill -- but no. After spending a shift in front of the wire, reading every dispatch from Blacksburg, it was impossible to shut off my brain. I went to bed late and spent a twitchy night trying to fight my way to sleep. Didn't happen. I gave up at 5:30 and spent time checking out the mindless internet. It's not eight hours of prime napping, but it'll do.

2007-04-16T20:06:00.000-07:00

Don't cha just love deja vu?

I'm not talking about a poorly executed Matrix-y black-cat-repeition scene, but that feeling of I swear, I had this dream six months ago which crops up from time to time.

When that feeling of "repeat!" hits me, I try to view it as the universe telling me my life's sticking to its preordained track, or my inner Calvinist reminding me it's all a lost cause anyway and hello fast train to hell! (Why yes, I do have Puritan ancestors; how could you tell?)

And yes, sometimes I like to indulge in a little magical thinking -- maybe those vivid-but-boring dreams do hold the key to what comes next, if only I could remember -- but most of the time I'll shake it off and go about my business.

But today that old feeling of "I have so done this before" washed over me and I just wanted to scream. To go back to that magical thinking for a moment, if this is the path the universe has laid out for me, I'd like to speak to someone in charge, seriously. I'd like a little guidence, or at least a map and a dart, or reassurance that this is as good as it gets, and darlin', it's pretty damn good.

Or a martini. I'd take a martini.

I mean, honestly.

2007-04-14T20:55:00.000-07:00

Have I talked about my busted-ass keyboard? No?

Well.

About a month after I purchased the iBook, my J-key popped off. Just the feature every girl hopes for in spanking new technology -- a busted-ass keyboard.

It freaked me out in the beginning -- having that piece of plastic slip out of place and fling itself towards sweet, sweet freedom was disconcerting to say the least -- but I've learned to tolerate it over the months. And now? It doesn't bother me so much. I'll be tapping away and that J-key will make another break for it, I'll catch it and beat it into submission again. It's annoying, but fixable.

Startles the hell out of fellow Satellite patrons on occasion. Boink will go the key, causing the guy on my right to gasp and say, "Your! Your keyboard! It broke!" And I'll show him how I fix it and then he asks if I've taken it to the Apple Store for consultation.

Well, no. Not yet. That would require stepping foot in the Albuquerque Uptown project and I haven't worked up the stomach for that. It takes a lot of courage to face Appletopia and Williams Sonoma and Pottery Barn.

Anyway. That damn J-key. In working on the project that will not be named, it has come to light just how often I use the word "just." And I'm skittish, see, because if I hit that J-key in just (there's that word again) the right manner, it could disrupt the narrative flow, damn up the stream of consciousness and otherwise impede progress.

Damn keyboard.

2007-04-12T09:54:00.001-07:00

Congratulations Patrick -- I mean, Dr. Cooper -- on snaring that Ph.D.

2007-04-11T09:59:00.001-07:00

That really shouldn't make me laugh, but it does.

2007-04-10T14:51:00.000-07:00

A red light camera violation never did turn up, so I imagine I'm off the hook.

Which means there's a stack of six violations sitting in my mailbox.

But still.

2007-04-06T09:09:00.000-07:00

The last laptop -- a technological dinosaur without a built-in WiFi card -- was kick-ass awesome for this part of the project, and by that I mean the part of the project where I need to stop checking my e-mail, Flickr, my e-mail, Flickr, the blogroll, Flickr, and e-mail (and Flickr) repeatedly and just type.

The new hotness laptop? I could turn off Airport, but why would I want to? I'd be cut off from Flickr. And e-mail!

(I mean, just right there, Gmail dinged up a fresh e-mail. If Airport wasn't engaged, I wouldn't have known.)

Procrastination, especially on such a tight deadline, is fun!

2007-04-02T15:05:00.000-07:00

My brain is melting.

M
E
L
T
I
N
G.

I have to wear a hat to keep it from leaking out of my ears, to keep it from exploding my cranium. I have to keep it drenched in caffeine and Advil so it won't revolt. In turn, it's doing what I want it to do.

I'm working. There's a very large deadline slumbering in the immediate future.

2007-04-01T12:29:00.000-07:00

In the evenings, when we settle down for long stretches of mindless television, we both tend to have some sort of crafting project. Adam, who honed his skills on painting models as a child, refurbishes Transformers.

I knit.

Adam's turn around is a lot faster than mine: he can knock out an updated Transformer in the time it takes to watch two Mythbusters episodes and a Boston Legal. My projects are a little more long-term. There's a lot of picking up and putting down, but I've mastered a couple of projects that move in a hurry and satisfy my need for instant gratification. Like, I made a hat, which snowballed into a hat for my little Babo, which turned into a hat for a friend's regular-sized Babo. And I also made my stupid simple afghan on the mongo needles, which took four skeins of yarn and two weeks of TV time to complete. Stupid. Simple.

But I have finished all those projects and I'm looking to do something new, which was when my friend Scout suggested Yarnplay by Lisa Shobhana Mason as a great project book.

It is great. The photography by itself is drool worthy, and the colors are very mod awesome.

But now I'm tempted by one sweater, the "Edie" sweater, an asymmetrical cardigan, and I have sworn up and down that I'd never attempt a sweater because I'm not that great a knitter.

I think I'm going to attempt that sweater. It will be the long-long-term project, while I have smaller projects going on other needles and Adam thinks I'm absolutely insane, but yeah. I think I'm going to attempt a sweater. My mother swears it's a worthwhile endeavor, and she still wears the first sweater she knitted some thirty years later, but she says she ripped it out so many times and put so many tears into it that she feels duty bound to wear that sweater to the grave.

This had better be one hell of a sweater, that's all I'm saying.

Sarah's Stupid Simple Afghan

Measures about 60" x 60" when finished.

Using Lion's Brand Homespun acrylic in whatever color (4 skeins)
Cast on 8 stitches onto a US 17 (12 3/4 mm) needles
Knit across
For two skeins, knit four, yarn over, knit to end.
For remaining two skeins, knit three, knit two together, yarn over, knit two together, knit to end.
When down to 8 stitches, bind off.

Stupid. Simple.

(Taken from a dish cloth pattern given to my mother by one of her numerous aunts-and-or-cousins in North Carolina in 1986.)

2007-03-29T19:00:00.000-07:00

[The internet tubes at home are clogged, and we totally spaced buying some digital Draino last week. I'll only have limited access for the next 24-48 hours, meaning at work, meaning tomorrow, meaning my the day of heaviest workload for the week. What does this mean to you? If you sent me an e-mail or commented, it might be awhile until I get back to you. I don't hate you, I'm just stuck.]

One of the things I love about Albuquerque is the seasonal stubborness that comes out. Once that thermometer hits 75 degrees three days in a row, an official proclaimation goes out declaring it's spring, man. Doesn't matter what the Weather Nerd says, doesn't matter how many late season cold fronts plow through the state, it's friggin' spring. Dress accordingly.

On my way into work this morning, I saw this practice embraced by every pedistrian I passed. Even though it was barely 40 degrees, there was the guy running in shorts and a tank-top, the mom in a mini skirt pushing her toddler (dressed in a t-shirt and howling, because it was friggin' cold, Mom!) to playgroup. Kids out on spring break were lounging around in jeans and t-shirts, their hands shoved into their arm pits, their lips turning a lovely shade of blue.

It's spring in Albuquerque. It's not cold. You're just a wuss.

Its the same sort of willful suspension of disbelief that sees homeowners on the roof Thanksgiving weekend, finally getting around to winterizing their swamp coolers. Until then, the chore was put off with the irrational argument of, "Well, you know, it always get really hot in October, and you'll want the cooler then."

For the record, it's never that hot in October.

Ah, Albuquerque, this is why I love you.

2007-03-28T17:01:00.000-07:00

I know, I know. The previous entry was very "emo, much?"

Let us never speak of it again.

Okay, fine. I do, on occasion, stress about the size of my head. I have a very large head, always have. My large noggin forced my mom to have a C-section, forever ruining her ability to rock the hell out of a bikini, and it's been a menace ever since.

Most of the time, I don't mind. I like to think of that extra three inches of bone as my natural football helmet, and planetoids like mine are the reason they invented adjustible bands.

But sometimes I wish that my head was a little less Easter Island, you know?

2007-03-27T21:00:00.000-07:00

I was overly tired and feeling inadequate about life choices and things I cannot change, like the size of my head in relation to my ability to wear a short, sassy geek-girl haircut and the decision to drop premed as a junior. It was 11:30 on a Monday night and I was making the commute in the Civic on an empty, endless Paseo del Norte, chugging home, feeling vulnerable. And then, the radio decided to hit me with a one-two sucker punch of Daughtry's cover of "Rocket Man" and U2's "Electrical Storm."

And now the world has another way to make me look like a chump. A chump who will cry because of songs on the radio and head size.

I'm glad the world is looking out for me.

2007-03-25T20:28:00.000-07:00

There has been some progress, so I'm not as glum about it as I could be. Progress is progress.

There's also been some progress in the baking hobby.

Lemon bars from the recipe of a friend's mother (thank you, Scout!) and another stab at the Guinness chocolate cupcakes, this time with a lemon cream filling and a ganache icing. The lemon bars are amazing. Can't believe I made them. The cupcakes? Aren't supposed to crunch like that.

Yeah, crunch. I think it's time to let this recipe die and move on to something else.

2007-03-22T08:48:00.000-07:00

It's not even that revisions have stalled out; that would imply a recent engagement of the creative clutch and a firm hand on the gear shift of work ethic. It's more that I've lost the keys and am searching everywhere for them, while they've been dangling in the ignition the entire time. As soon as I get out to the kicking roadster of tired metaphor and find them, I'm sure I'll be on my way. And then I can say (with confidence) that revisions have stalled.

To that end, I've been thinking about getting a typewriter. Maybe an IBM Selectric II or a manual jobbie in pristine condition; something that would sound the "TAP! TAP! TAP!" of authority with every keystroke, something that I could bang (hee!) out a draft on, just to finish, before doing a retype-and-tweak on the Mac.

And then I could add to my typewriter collection, because I'm just that nerdy. I have a 1920s Underwood which belonged to my Great Grandfather, the Country Doctor, and a 1930s reporter's typewriter that I bought at a garage sale for five bucks a few years back, and I'd like to expand the collection to include something useful and awesome, or at least with a working ribbon.

It's a distraction, though. This is all distraction from sitting down and putting the words on a page. The story is there; it's the fear that after all of this, it still won't be enough that has me on perpetual pause. I don't know how to work around it, and there's not a single magical typewriter in the world that would help me through it.

Just got to knuckle down and do.

2007-03-20T13:56:00.000-07:00

Well, hell. I think I got popped by the red light camera at Jefferson and Paseo del Norte. Doesn't that just suck?

That niggling feeling of crap! has been lingering since just after I exited the intersection. You know how it goes: you roll up to one of these camera-monitored spaces, trying so hard not to break the law, and then for the rest of the day you're asking yourself "Did I come to a full and complete stop? Like with a period and everything?"

I'm pretty sure I didn't STOP. I stopped long enough to see the intersection was clear, but did I stop-stop? I can't remember, and I don't think I did. The memory banks are telling me the tires might have been rolling.

Crap.

This is what I don't like about Marty's Income Generating Cameras of Justice -- that lack of gray area. A cop most likely wouldn't have flinched at the California stop. The camera will be relieving me of that benjamin.

I'll be the first person to admit I was being stupid if I did actually run the light. I usually carry a healthy heaping of paranoia in relation to the camera: it's all five miles under the limit and panic stops because as much as I love Albuquerque, I can think of better things to do with my hundred dollars than pay a fine.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

2007-03-19T10:59:00.000-07:00

The occasional book tour -- Waiting for Daisy by Peggy Orenstein

No, seriously. How can you not love a book fully entitled: "Waiting for Daisy -- A Tale of Two Continents, Three Religions, Five Infertility Doctors, an Oscar, an Atomic Bomb, a Romantic Night, and One Woman's Quest to Become a Mother"?

Exactly.

Peggy Orenstein, author of Schoolgirls and Flux has written a memoir of unflinching honesty as she moves through her ambivalence to having a child to full-on obsession with getting pregnant, and then, staying pregnant. (Readers be warned, Oreinstein writes about three miscarriages in heart-shredding detail. )

She hits the highlights for any fertility memoir: doctors' visits, an acupuncturist's dirt tea, sliding into more and more outlandish "treatments" (there's this bit with nuns' urine) as the months tick by and she is still without child. These are the notes hit in any fertility memoir, and in lesser hands, it would be boring-assed boilerplate before the author is handed the deus ex machina baby on page 240.

But Orenstein goes deeper. In the middle of her struggle with infertility, she travels to Hiroshima and chronicles the emotional fallout of the events of August, 1945. She talks to survivors who later came to the States for medical care and plastic surgery as a gesture of goodwill. She meets a woman who has inherited her father's work of placing Hiroshima orphans in homes. She grieves for her own loss. She tentatively begins the process of adopting. The book moves into powerful, redemptive territory.

One thing that stuck in the back of my head as I read was how much I wanted Orenstein to become a mother. Even through the lowest pits of her journey, she maintains wit and grace, and aren't those values you'd like to see in today's parents?

Exactly.

2007-03-18T20:01:00.000-07:00

Lots of baking this weekend:

And Adam got a macro lens for the D40. All in all, a very good weekend.

2007-03-18T14:34:00.000-07:00

Formula One is back on the telly. The Australian Gran Prix is happening, and I know (sort of) a person in attendance.

"The cars are making a pleasing noise," Adam says. It's true. The quiet hum of engines spinning up to 19,000 rpm is having the usual soporific effect: my eyes are drooping even though it's barely ten. The "mmmmmmmMMMMMMMMVRRRRRRROOOOOOOOOOMPPPPHMmmmmm" of a Maclaren is enough to put me right out, and we reminisce about a couple of memorable naps had on the Indianapolis Speedway viewing mounds.

The driver ranking graphic pops up, and Adam giggles. "I'm sorry, but whenever I see 'L. Hamilton,' I'm thinking Linda, not Louis."

"You think Scott Speed went up to him and was all, 'I loved you in Terminator?'"

"Most likely. And when he did it, he was sporting the Brad Pitt, Jr. look of closed-cropped hair, aviator shades and a pimp coat worn over tighty-whities."

"And Linda was like, 'the wha?'"

"And for the rest of the season, he will be referred to as Linda."

"Nah. DC will call him 'newbie,' ala Cox, and Webber will simply refer to him as 'Girl's Name.'"

" 'Hey! Girl's Name! Congratulations on that first podium.' "

" 'But my name is Louis. Louis!' "

"And then, just to fuck with him, Speed will start calling him 'Louise' sometime after Monaco."

" 'Welcome to the F1, bitch.' "

2007-03-16T08:37:00.000-07:00

I am currently in an undisclosed downtown location, drinking coffee that my father-in-law bought for me on his very last day as a working stiff.

It's a different world.

2007-03-14T21:04:00.000-07:00

It was a mini ALOTT5MA meet-up!

And Pi Day!

2007-03-14T17:10:00.000-07:00

It was a record high of 79 today in the Duke City. And a happy Pi Day to you, too.

A month ago today, I was freaking out over Winter Storm Hoth. Today? Chillin' on the Starbucks patio with Dan, Steve and Racquel. That is the Albuquerque weather I know and love.

(Yes, I did say "chillin'." I don't care if 1995 called, it's not getting its slang back.)

Of course, with temperatures scraping the 80s, it does beg the question of when to switch over the swamp cooler. Tradition dictates Memorial Day weekend, but the weather of Aught Seven has been tempremental enough to mix it up. BUT! -- and there's always a -- the possibility of Winter Storm IG-88 making an appearance and freezing all the tulips remains in play until the first week of May.

Never discount that late season storm.

Still, I'm loving today. It's been all-sunglasses, all-sunscreen, all-top-down-all-the-time, even if I was stuck inside for most of it. We need more warm days like today. More!

2007-03-13T12:45:00.000-07:00

Hey, Racquel! Would you be willing to meet up at the 'Bucks for coffee some time? Sling me an e-mail: drivinginheels at gmail det com.

2007-03-12T20:50:00.000-07:00

Today's weirdness.

~ At the corner of Paseo and Eagle Ranch NW: I had the top down on Bucky and was waiting for the light to turn green in the center/left lane. A work truck coasts to a stop in the turn lane next to me, and the driver shouts: "HEY! GRACE KELLY!" and I turn to see if he's yelling at me (he is) and he grins and shouts, "YOU'RE BEAUTIFUL!"

This proves my theory that a reasonably plain woman is knocked into the top 10% the minute she gets into a classic roadster.

Also, Grace Kelly? Was blonde. If we're going to tag me as a generally known, classic dead celebrity, can't I be Audrey Hepburn? The hair color's right, at least. Or Liz Taylor, minus the seven marriages?

Oh, I shouldn't complain. Grace Kelly got an Hermes bag and free tickets for life to the Monaco GP. That's pretty darn good.

(And I'm still not seeing it.)

~ I made cookies for Adam over the weekend. Nothing major, just oatmeal chocolate chip. Adam took a couple with us while we ran errands on Sunday, and ended up leaving one in the Civic. I remembered it was there, as you do at 3 a.m. Just a thought of, "Remember to get that out of there before all the chocolate melts and stains the oh-so-unreplaceable upholstry." Which I did remember this morning. Only, when I went out to the Civic (the only car we keep unlocked and parked on the street), the cookie was gone. I assumed Adam had grabbed it and eaten it (because, OMG cookie), but when I asked him later, he had not.

A cursory search of the Civic proved cookie-less.

I can only imagine what happened. Some kid on the way to the bus stop passed our car and said "ooooooh! cookie" or the weird neighbor was . . . doing something near the Civic and was feeling a little peckish. I don't know. Lock your doors; there's a cookie thief loose on the West Mesa.

2007-03-12T09:51:00.000-07:00

One of my very favorite places is the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science in Albuquerque's Old Town. I know every city has a museum like this, that it's a variation on a theme: kid-friendly, hands-on science with a generous helping of dinosaurs. I've been to a lot of those museums. Heck, I have been to museums all over this planet of ours, and I think our little tribute to the natural world is one of the best.

My parents made a special trip to Albuquerque when it opened twenty-some years ago, which was unheard of. A trip to Albuquerque in those pre-Costco days meant we were flying somewhere, otherwise there was no justification for the four hour car trip and expense of a night in a hotel. But when the museum opened, we were so there.

I remember how friggin' awesome the musuem was, especially to an eight-year-old. There was an automated T-Rex that roared, and a simulated volcano that you could walk through (and over glowing "lava" which always thrilled me). I remember how I could spend hours staring up at the leg bone of a brachiosaurus, and hanging around the stegosauraus affectionately known as Spike. The displays on New Mexico's sea coast and the origins of DNA were awe-inspiring to a little kid with an already nerdy bent, and unlike the Louvre, this new museum was hands on. There were buttons to push, and mammoth skulls to touch and a whole room dedicated for children to explore the natural room. Unfortunately, this room also had the collection of live snakes, which always seemed to be out for touching, and I am not a fan of the slitheries, so there was always an air of danger going into the resource room.

My mother -- a docent, now -- still refuses to go in there.

After that first trip, no visit to Albuquerque was complete without a run through the museum. Seriously. Doctors' appointments were followed by some quality time hanging out in the volcano, which just made the former Albuquerque contingent go, "Oh, MAN," because sometimes you just need to hang out in a lightless room dedicated to liquid hot magma.

In the last year, my parents have become volunteers for the museum. My mother is an on-again, off-again docent. "Here are the dinosaurs. There are the bathrooms." My dad, a former physical science teacher, is training to become a chiseler, one of those guys you see in the Fossil Works lab in the center of the downstairs, carving out fossils from bedrock with dental tools. How friggin' cool is that? His training has been on a mammoth skeleton, but after graduation there's talk of moving up to dinosaurs. My dad's a total rock star.

The museum is one of those happy places where I can go in feeling kind of down and come out feeling rather cheerful. It's a lovely space in a lovely city.

We went to the museum yesterday for the first time in ages, after the gawdforsaken autocross on Saturday. We took a messenger bag stuffed full of Uglydolls and cameras and spent an enjoyable couple of hours running around our favorite exhibits taking stupid pictures and talking about how we loved coming here as kids and our childhoods in general. It felt like we were visiting old friends. We shoved a couple of dollars into the Stan collection fund and were rewarded with a roar similar to the long-gone animatronic T-Rex. It was a good day.

2007-03-10T13:43:00.000-08:00

I did not race.

It was kind of a cruddy day. A lot of cars showed up -- I heard 72, yay! -- which split into three run groups. I was assigned to work a corner for the first run group, and would drive in the third group. Adam was put in the first run group and assigned to work for the third group. It wasn't the best outcome for a day ever, but y'know. Whatever. We'd hang out for the second two run groups and have a fan.tast.ic. time.

Well, I was right about the "ick" part.

First, that 74 degree day Weather Nerd was promising did not show up. It was chilly and overcast and a touch windy out on the mesa, and I was stupid enough not to take a heavy coat. So there was a lot of shivering in a hoodie praying it wouldn't rain.

It didn't. Whew.

But, there was an accident during the first group's first run. A guy in a Neon SRT-4 lost control on the inner oval and slammed into the wall. He was fine, but the car is a total write-off. Time was eaten up by towing and clean-up, and then the 30+ cars running a 100 second course three times, and suddenly four hours were gone.

Four hours eaten up for one group. I cried uncle when the last car came in, and came home. There was no way I was going to have any sort of decent run. My tires were not going to get up to temp, and the course demanded hot tires. I was exhausted from the morning, and the course was demanding. Like a good racer, I evaluated the situation and said in my very best Cartman voice, "screw you guys, I'm going home."

I think it would have had more impact if anyone had heard me with that last one.

There is another event in two weeks at UNM G Lot. Try, try again. I'm disappointed, but, y'know, it was my own choice to leave without getting a run in. I have nobody to blame but myself.

And right now, I have "Singles" on HBO and a pot of coffee going, and when Adam gets back (at midnight) we're going downtown for sushi and a movie, so life isn't too bad at all.

2007-03-08T14:03:00.000-08:00

The commute has turned into an exercise of following the line and practicing cornering, and I'm obsessing over apexes and gear selection again. It's a challenge to not view the other vehicles on Paseo as moving cones, because A) street racing is bad mmmkay? and B) try explaining to a cop that the SUV/Minivan/Truck combo was actually a mobile chicane?

My brain is fuel-soaked and craving the sweet, sweet aroma of unburnt chloroflorocarbons, hot hydrolic fluid and melted rubber. The music on my iPod has made a suspicious shift away from the mellow to something a little more suitable for the Gran Turismo games. I've been practicing full cross steering in the parking lot.

I'm a little race-happy. Can you tell?

The SCCA season kicks off on Saturday with an event at Sandia Motorsports. I hadn't planned on going; the fees for Sandia are usually just a little too much for me to justify, but Adam is ponying up my entry fee. And with that, I am so in.

But -- for the sake of full disclosure -- I should note this will be the annual first event where I show up, gung-ho for another season and then . . . I don't know, life sets in and every other weekend I'll mumble some excuse involving a combination of the words "revision" "deadline" and "sunburn."

But for now? I'm in! The course map is already up and it looks like a friggin' blast (even if it's more a power course, now that event organizer Tom has gone to the dark side of American muscle). I'm just aching to show up in my little black helmet and get Bucky (and his new JDM suspension) onto the track -- and not into the dirt.

2007-03-06T21:25:00.000-08:00

Adam whipped up a homicidal alien for me. Isn't that the sweetest thing?

2007-03-05T21:16:00.000-08:00

In the ongoing identity crisis of "well?" I posed the question to my iPod*, which may or may not be sentient. And despite being almost clean of any music not originating in the Pacific Northwest, it dug up the remix of U2's Discotheque, which I thought had been lost in a purge last December, but that is not the point.

The point is this line:

You wanna be the one/But you know you're someone else instead/Wanna be the song/Be the song that you hear in your head

Which just about sums it up. Spooky, ain't it?

*Oh, c'mon. Asking your iPod for advice is the new Magic 8 Ball. Shuffle the songs, ask your question and hit forward.

2007-03-04T16:53:00.000-08:00

Questions I'm putting to you, my lovely readers. Please remember to show your work.

1. I'm looking for a local business where I can grab a pair of classic Chuck Taylors. Sources?

2. Australia or new back yard? We've been staring at mesa for the last four years, and it's getting embarrassing. On the other hand, Australia.

3. Zia tattoo -- cool or cliche?

4. Should the site go through a redesign?

2007-03-03T20:06:00.000-08:00

Every couple of years we decide to go to the Fiery Food Show, and every couple of years we remember that, oh yeah, it friggin' sucks. The crowd's impenetrable, the sauces on sample are usually not up to par, and someone usually comes out cranky.

This was one of those years we forgot. Or maybe we remembered, but we were being lured to the Sandia Pueblo by the siren song of the Bhut Jolokia, the hottest chile in the world.

I like me a chile that comes with a warning label.

The Bhut Jolokia is rated at over 1,000,000 scovilles of heat. A New Mexico green chile is rated at 1,000 scovilles. A jalepeno is rated 2,500 to 10,o00. Pepper spray is 2,000,000.

This thing is one-half strength mace.

Mmm. Incapacitating.

In addition to the dried pods (no, we haven't fucked with them . . . yet), Adam bought a package of seeds and a seedling. He has already formulated great plans of hand-raising his new chile ~~plant~~ pet and using it for world domination.

I have no doubt.

If you want to put a little time and tenderness into torturing your own taste buds, New Mexico State University is selling seeds through its Chile Pepper Institute. www.chilepeperinstitute.org.

2007-02-28T20:57:00.000-08:00

Oy, the wind. Right now, it's blowing at the house and screeching through the gaps in the windows (gotta love that tract housing!), and it sounds exactly like a toddler I babysat a million years ago. She (and the wind) would start out with a low moan of discontent before amping up into a full-blast wail of "WAAAAAAAAAAAA" before mixing it up with pauses and shrieks.

And now that I'm flashing back, I'm realizing that toddler will be graduating from high school this year, and good lord, that's just not right.

Wind in New Mexico is something to be endured. The joke is the windy season starts in January and ends on December 31 -- or if you prefer -- New Mexico has three seasons: hot, cold and windy.

Like the Santa Ana in California, the New Mexico wind makes people crazy. Everyone's on edge; one minor inconvenience away from going "Falling Down." It's the constant howling, the dust obscuring the sky and the mountains, well-mannered pets going nuts, and the pile of tumbleweeds lodged under every single car in the lot that pushes everyone to the breaking point. It's like being marooned on top of Mt. Washington with 750,000 of your not so nearest-and-dearest.

Add the full moon into the equation, and you've got one big pot of crazy. There was a lot of road rage today; apart from the usual tailgating and cutting off, people were using their horns. You folks back east might snicker, but if there's one universal rule of the road in these parts, it would be You. Don't Honk. Ever. And today everyone was honking. The commute was an exercise in automotive meditation, kicking back, signaling early, not speeding but not going too slow and not trying anything stupid. I was not the person cutting off the ambulance today.

I'm serious.

Wedge the Weather Nerd is promising that the wind won't be as bad tomorrow, but still blustery. I'm trying to look at this as a positive -- I get to wear my spiffy new hat! -- but I'm just as on edge. My dear sweet husband is making the normal noises of being a living human, and it is taking all of my self-control not to bite his head off. Nails on a chalkboard combined with a dentist's drill, mashed-up with a Rush drum solo has nothing on this right now.

I'm going insane.

Kisses,
Not the Preying Mantis

2007-02-28T08:50:00.000-08:00

A reader asks: How's that book coming?

Did you see my spiffy hat?

Oh, fine. I'm totally stalled out.

[Insert "just sit down and do it" boilerplate, maybe a little angst over the time it's taking and then some half-hearted assurances that "it will get done" with the requisite ellipses of "eventually."]

And did you see my spiffy hat?

2007-02-27T21:00:00.000-08:00

Since fire season now starts in friggin' February, I think it's time to post the rules:

1. Do not play with fire outside.
2. If you find you must smoke outside, please make sure your cigarette is completely extinguished. You may have to swallow.
3. Do not, for any reason, decide a windy day is the perfect time to burn some rubbish on your property.

See? Three easy rules. Now can we please try to follow them?

2007-02-27T08:09:00.000-08:00

I took a sick day yesterday to try to cut this cold-thing off at the pass. Of course, "cutting off at the pass" in this instance was a plan of lying around the house in a posture that would piss off most chiropractics, laptop balanced on my chest, washing cold remedies down with Airborne and aimlessly wandering the interwebs until it was time for "Heroes."

And then Qwest hit our neighborhood with an internet outage around noon, and didn't bring back the ones and zeroes of life until almost midnight, so my plan was shot, though there was still Airborne and kleenex involved, it wasn't as awesomely slothful as originally intended. Like Andy from FoxTrot once noted, never mix coffee and decongestants.

I knitted.

Dude, I knitted a lot.

I finished a hat made from Australian merino wool that may have been previously worn by my friend Kevin's sheep, who's this big macho sheep farmer near Canberra; wool which was purchased at Village Wools, which means I supported local economies on two continents, and if you don't think I've been smugging that one up, you don't know me very well at all.

Anyway, hat.

It fits my ginormous head.

And then, because I have an extensive DVD library and was sans-Web, I continued the mindless knitting, crossing the double yellow line of sanity and veering headlong into twee territory with this:

Yep.

And now I've got one of my patented stupid-simple afghans going on the Mongo Needles of the Knitting, for when I want to sit in front of the telly and not do a damn thing except watch Star Wars Episode V for the 39,000th time.

2007-02-25T12:42:00.000-08:00

We did not buy any new Uglydolls this weekend.*

*Okay, we didn't buy any, but the four Secret Mission that we ordered showed up on Friday. It's a sickness. A. sick. ness.

And then we took pictures of them.

Yeah.

In other news, Adam's very excited about buying a Nikon D40 in the next several weeks.

2007-02-23T08:45:00.000-08:00

So either I have allergies or a cold, or both. Oh, it doesn't matter, I've contracted the crud that's sweeping Journal Center, and even the cheerfully bulimic cat is impressed at the amount of yuck coming out of my sinuses.

Also, she's freaked out by the honking, but that's her problem.

Anyway, this means that spring has a toe-hold here, because I always get sick right after it starts warming up and things start blooming. So, yee-haw! Spring! More top down drives, ahoy!

2007-02-21T20:49:00.000-08:00

I am not pregnant.

I think I should start with the bombshell statement first, because burying the lede is a bad habit, and yesterday's 42 comment got a couple of people curious enough to ask.

I am also not trying to get pregnant. May as well throw that one out there while we're at it.

I've been doing this thing, see, and I've dropped a chunk of weight since the end of October. I'm still short, but I'm not nearly as round as I was. Now, because I'm in a long-term, committed heterosexual relationship and a homeowner, people have been sidling up to me and asking (politely) if I'm knocked up or what? And when I answer, "oh, God, no!" they don't just laugh it off. Well, some do. But a couple of people have patted me on the shoulder and told me to just give it time.

I get it, I do. Long-term, committed heterosexual homeowners (of the female persuasion) dropping a little weight are sometimes doing it with an eye towards starting a family. And it makes sense that some people who know us, but don't know us very well, would assume that seven years after pledging our love to each other and the Klingon god of companionship (I'm not kidding), and after four years of homeowner ship and with 30 looming on the horizon, we might be eager to hop aboard the train to Offspringville, and that me dropping to my fighting weight is a sign of bigger plans.

Except, not so much. Seriously. Our hobbies include taking photographs of art toys in amusing tableaux; driving small, impractical roadsters; drinking our way through the California coast and sushi. We make up new and interesting combinations of swear words, play with sharp objects and are completely self-involved. We are not child-friendly.

Someday -- and isn't that a lovely, fuzzy phrase, someday? -- we will probably have a kid. Most likely have a kid. A. Singular. Child. A child who isn't our recombined DNA, but a kid abandoned who needs and deserves a loving home, because we are turning into bigger and bigger hippies the older we get, that kind of kid. But that's someday. Far, far in the future.

The people who know us know about the someday clause. Our parents support us and don't put any pressure on us to make with the grandbabies. Yeah, I think the moms would love to have a little baby to cuddle, but they both had us in their thirties and understand there's no particular rush now. The people who don't know us very well, well, I guess I could try to explain the someday clause, but I don't think it'd go over well. The few times I've tried in the past, I get asked, "but don't you want to be a mommy?"

Um, no. Not right now. Especially when we're toying with the idea of returning to school. I've found a very intriguing masters program through the University of Washington, but it would require several semesters' undergrad work, which I may as well do at UNM, because if I'm going to have to take calculus, I'm going to do it at in-state grad student rates, thank you very much, and even then, I'm going to have to start at the bottom because my last math class was a dozen years ago, and I'm pretty sure I've forgotten how to solve for X.

Also, UNM's a pretty decent school, or so I hear.

Meanwhile, Adam's messing around with the idea of returning to UNM for his BFA in photography. And when I say "messing around with" I really do mean "messing around with." It's a seed of an idea. A nugget. A crumb.

Still, it was enough of a crumb to send us down to campus last weekend for the first time in four years. We wandered around, checked out the refurbished Student Union, hung out at the Duck Pond and discussed becoming those obnoxious non-traditional students we hated the first time around. So now's the time to look into applications and educational credits and juggling work schedules around class schedules. It's early days, yet. Something far more interesting could come along between now and the middle of August.

Like pirates. Or culinary school. Or culinary pirates.

Also, the do-we-or-don't-we-sell-the-house issue remains on the table. We're leaning towards selling. The neighborhood's getting scary. As Adam described it: "We are one megachurch minister away from 'Fahrenheit 451,' " which, you laugh, but it's closer to the truth than is comfortable.

Come and save us, culinary pirates!

So to recap: not pregnant. Not trying to be pregnant. No babies in the future. Possibly heading back to school. Selling the house. And finally, pirates.

And if that doesn't satisfy you, here's a picture of Target scanning his butt.

(not child-friendly in the least)

2007-02-20T18:08:00.000-08:00

A thread dedicated to lurkers over at ALOTT5MA has turned into a rolicking conversation and has sent a few people in this direction (thanks, Isaac!), and now I'm curious about my readers, all twelve of you. I know I have a contengent of people who check in with me daily and now I'd like to know who those people actually are. So please, introduce yourself in the comments.

(I do have a real post brewing, and it can be summed up as the number 42, but it could be a couple of days. I won't forget though, promise.)

2007-02-17T20:40:00.000-08:00

"Oh, dear God in heaven."

"What? Who died?"

"Brit-Brit shaved her head."

"Oh, my God."

"I know."

"No, no. That's totally not what I'm oh-em-gee-ing over."

"No?"

"No. I can't believe it's taken you until now to see the photographs. Where were you this morning? Even the Fug Girls took time out from their weekend to write an Emergency Letter of Truth."

"She shaved her whole head!"

"By herself."

" . . ."

"Seriously. Go to Perez. There are pictures of her with the clippers in her hands, going totally G. I. Jane on her extensions."

" . . . "

"Yeah, G.I. Jane was the obvious joke. 'Going all 'V for Vendetta' would have been much more hipster."

"Wouldn't know. You haven't let me watch that movie."

"Shush it."

"But she's bald."

"Now the curtains match the -- ?"

"See, underpants humor? I like the underpants humor. Especially when there aren't any underpants actually involved."

"Perv."

"Seriously, though. Oh, Brit-Brit. Why did you have to shave your head?"

"I dunno. I've had days were I've looked at my hair and thought about taking a razor to it."

"No, it wouldn't be a good look on you. For one your head's ginormous."

"It is."

"And two, it could be scary lumpy."

"Bump city."

"I mean, have you felt your head? It's kind of large. And lumpy. Like a pumpkin. An award-winning pumpkin. A pumpkin worthy of Linus's worship and devotion and -- "

"I have a big head. I get it."

"I mean, hats quiver in fear at the sound of your name."

"I. Get. It."

" . . . "

"Don't even sing the Pumpkin Head song. I can see it in your eyes, you're singing the pumpkin head song in your own head right now, and I'm telling you, if you want to live, you won't utter another syllable about my giant pumpkin-shaped noggin."

"When you thump it, it sounds hollow."

" . . . "

"She shaved her head!"

"And yet there's not a single Anna Nicole-related reference on the front page of CNN or Perez Hilton."

"Who knew that all it would take was one bad haircut."

"Man, we should pay her or something."

"No. Because now all it takes to make front page news is one bad pop tart haircut, when last week, you had to go and drop dead with methadone in your fridge."

"Point."

"Still."

"Still."

"Remember when she Vegas Quickied her childhood friend, and we were all, 'oh, Britney?' If we only knew."

"No, that's still worse than this. The whole Federline-'Chaotic'-two-babies-in-two-years was still worse than this. This is just an unfortunate choice in hair styles. Hair grows back. And she can be all about the wigs and the do rags between now and then."

"It's more than a bad haircut. It's more than showing the world she has jug ears. It is a sign that she is so on the next train to Rehabville."

"Train? What is this, the 1940s?"

"I think you just insulted Mayor Marty's favorite toy."

"Operator! Give me Springfield-nine-oh-four, please!"

"Klondike would have been funnier."

"What's ice cream got to do with anything? Somewhere in the world, a girl is bald, and all you can think about is ice cream?"

"They really shouldn't let us hang out."

"No. They really shouldn't."

2007-02-15T08:27:00.000-08:00

The monster storm from New Year's managed to wipe my mind of normal Albuquerque snowstorm behavior, because yesterday, I had totally forgotten that when it snows here, it's crappy until noon and then whatzyerproblem?

So I apologize if I downshifted into histrionics over the snow. Again.

The rest of the day proved to be lovely and quiet, and not at all Valentine's-y. What could be better?

*~*~*~*~*

After years of waiting and sneering at other states' quarter designs, the state has finally released the four contenders for the New Mexico state quarter.

At one point, there were six designs in the running, including a quarter that depicted the first nuclear blast at the Trinity site, and one with three balloons for the Albuquerque balloon fiesta, but they have fallen out of the running in favor of a more traditional scheme.

The designs are a variation on a theme: the Zia symbol positioned over a map of the state and 1912, the year we were included in the union. Three of them add "Land of Enchantment," just for good measure.

Out of the four designs, this is the one I find most pleasing. It's the cleanest of the four. The Zia symbol is positioned in the center of the state, rather than centered over an approximation of Santa Fe, which seems more inclusive of the whole of New Mexico. It's almost evocative of the state flag, which is a brilliant piece of design of itself.

I could do without the outline of New Mexico, though it is probably needed for the simpletons who don't know the difference between old Mexico and, well, you know. If we are playing to those inclinations and feeling a bit cheeky, we should take it one step further and add the USA tag, just like we do with our license plates.

I would also like to either size down the Zia or the text, because it's just a little too squeezed at the bottom. "Land of Enchantment" needs to breathe, and I'd like it if the points on the Zia were equidistant from the borders, but now I'm just being picky. There is only so much white space to work with on the back of a 25-cent piece.

The final design will be picked by Gov. Richardson later this spring and the quarter will go into circulation next March.

2007-02-14T10:24:00.000-08:00

The Paseo del Norte Update (11:00 a.m. edition)

-- It appears the city hasn't bothered to plow Paseo.
-- Or if they did plow, they didn't bother to also sand.
-- But really, I'm going for didn't plow/didn't sand.
-- The bridges are frozen, which made the Coors merge in-ter-est-ing.
-- There is one stranded car in the eastbound right hand lane just past General Mills causing a back up.

Anyone want to give me a ride from the Journal Center back home tonight?

2007-02-13T20:41:00.000-08:00

And I dub this Tropical Winter Storm Hoth, following Tropical Winter Storms:

1. Anakin
2. Boba
3. Chewbacca (the wookie that clobbered us over New Year's)
4. Dagobah
5. Endor
6. 4-LOM
7. Greedo

Which brings us back to Tropical Winter Storm Hoth. The next named storm will be Tropical Winter Storm IG-88.

We will be observing all tropical winter storm protocols including the running lines on the driveway, the wearing of the fuzzy monkey pants, the drinking of the coffee and the institution of the personal two hour delay. All Adams will be operating on a two hour delay.

2007-02-12T08:42:00.000-08:00

Oh, man. Nia & Co. at Talin Market has little Uglydolls. Nothing else was accomplished this weekend after we discovered this. We were too busy running around town taking pictures of newly acquired Uglys.

It's a strange little hobby, but it seems to fit two only children who grew up more with imaginary friends than real ones.

More can be found in his Flickr and my Flickr.

2007-02-09T08:19:00.000-08:00

Okay, that's weird.

Last night? Beautiful virgin wrist. This morning? Mole. It's small. It's red. It's angry. It's new.

It's not staying. Soon I will trot off to the doctor's office and have it sliced off straight away because in my family, new angry red moles can mean a long, painful death, which I'm really not in the market for, thanks.

I had my first ticking time bomb removed from my back when I was in my early twenties, so this is old hat. Go in. Get it looked at. Get patted on head. Go in a week later, get cut on by professional. Go in five days after that, get stitch pulled. Show off bitchin' new scar. That is the way we roll. Some call it overkill (it's just a mole), but I'm not about to die because my wussified ancestors lived in bogs and feared the weak-assed, Northern European sun.

Wusses.

Well-meaning, concerned types like to remind me to wear sunscreen, long sleeves and a hat, and for God's sake, stop driving around in a convertible in New Mexico, but I don't pay much attention to that last bit. The day I trade in Bucky is the day I'm told one of these little buggers went malignant, and even then I'd go for the just-as-unpractical Mini Cooper S. With the sunroof.

Life on my terms! Life! On my terms!

Still, for now there's no need to worry. Right now, it's just a small, angry, red, itinerant mole. We can play worst case scenario later.

But, um, you might want to invest in a bottle of 70 S.P.F.

2007-02-07T21:38:00.000-08:00

A reader writes:

Enough with the talky-talky. BE MORE NERDY!

This really makes me want to dig through the box labeled "COLLEGE" and post my reaction paper to "The Sound and the Fury," which landed my first senior-level A.

Which is not the precise reaction the reader is looking for, I bet.

2007-02-06T08:18:00.000-08:00

Ah! The Albuquerque City Council has voted 5-4 to restrict cell phone usage while driving. (Albuquerque Journal, sub. req., you know the drill) Now, if Mayor Marty would just pull out his signin' pen, we'll be in business.

I'm for the ban. Could you tell?

I cannot abide people indulge in talking-while-driving. It moved beyond the realm of peeve when the game turned from "drunk driver?" to "drunk or on the phone?" I mean, in the last week, how many times did you nearly died because someone was trying to pilot a three ton hunk of metal with one hand and half a brain? (Sixteen! It was a good week!)

Ten years ago, there would be the rare traffic bobble. A technology forward woman with a brick pressed up to her ear would pilot her minivan into my lane without noticing, for example, or a guy would run a stop sign because it was just too hard to use the brake pedal and a proto flip phone. Now, it's constant, right?

And it drives me nuts.

If a friend calls me and it's obvious they're on their cell, the first question out of my mouth is, "are you in traffic?" If they blow it off with a "yeah, I'm bored," I will make up some excuse -- any excuse, including "my cat's bulimic" -- and hang up. It makes my skin crawl just thinking that I helped someone put themselves and others at risk just by talking to them.

Yeah, I did say "risk."

If someone feels like getting snarky about their driving-while-talking habit, I refer them to this episode of Mythbusters, because nobody can argue with basic cable infotainment.

Which is the offender's cue to say, "I know, but I get so bored."

Seriously? Bored? I realize this is the same logic behind in-dash DVD players, but seriously? Bored?

You wouldn't get behind the wheel of the car when you were tipsy, so c'mon. It's not that hard. Eyes forward. Both hands on the steering wheel. Attention on the road and traffic. Enjoy the drive.

2007-02-05T17:39:00.000-08:00

Monday, February 5. First top down drive of 2007.

And what a great drive it was, too. The sun was warm, the heater was warmer, Paseo was wide open and there was a fun turn at the end. Every commute should be so joyous.

That's right. I said it.

Joy.

2007-02-05T08:58:00.000-08:00

Now he's just taunting me.

2007-02-04T19:17:00.000-08:00

And with the end of the Super Bowl and the loss of the Bears comes the angry revving as many, many drunk suburbanites pile into their SUVs and gun their engines in protest in the intersection behind my house.

Good luck getting home tonight, y'all. Be safe.

2007-02-04T10:46:00.000-08:00

Ah, the Super Bowl. Today is the one day a year where Adam will willingly sit down in front of an American football game, and then we'll debate what exactly a line of scrimage is and what it's used for and why it's on that particular part of the field and if, when they're all crouched like that, it smells bad because everyone had chili for lunch, because no matter how "mature" we are, fart jokes never get old. And then we congratulate each other for being so funny, because we're twelve, and then I have to remind Adam what a football looks like, and then if someone manages to get the ball in the end zone, we run around the house yelling "GOOOOOOOOOOAL!" or "home run!" because did I mention we're twelve? And then Adam asks what inning it is, and I answer him earnestly, and then he wants to know when the tea interval is, which this year happens when Prince is on stage, and then we make a few wagers as to what sort of asshattery will happen during half time.

All of this action takes place at 3x speed, bless those Tivo gods. We resume normal speed for the commercials, of course, so we can critique this year's batch of ads, replay, critique and then resume the game. The whole affair takes about an hour and a half. This is how we watch football.

2007-01-31T20:32:00.000-08:00

Ryan Bourret -- the genius behind my Dark Avenger art and an all-around, stand-up kind of guy -- decided Me Grimlock needed his own actual cooking show.

No, seriously, this is why we have YouTube.

I love my friends. This absolutely made my day. Thank you, Rai.

2007-01-30T20:36:00.000-08:00

Oh, look. It's snowing. Again. Thank you, January, for underlining that point.

In red Sharpie.

Twice.

It seems like this January lasted for eighteen years, don't you think? It was a month of snow, more snow, even more snow, couple of illnesses thrown in for good measure, oooooooh one nice day! and then more snow. This wasn't January in New Mexico, this was January in the northern territories of Canada.

I've never been partial to January. It starts out with a hangover and descends into the hell of a level 5 clean room, what with the cold and the lists of resolutions and packed away Christmas decorations. Used to be the Super Bowl was the one bright spot at the end of January, but they've moved that to February and now there's nothing except 31 days of blah. January is spent knocking around a cold house, clutching lukewarm cups of coffee, muttering about the heating bill and waiting for a spring which is never going to come.

February has the virtue of being short and sweet. Twenty-eight days -- a civilized length of time in the dead of winter -- where we celebrate weather-predicting rodents, love, presidents and Black History Month, with Bill Murray movies, candies, sales and elementary kids hearing "I Have a Dream" for the first time ever. Who doesn't love February?

God, I'm ready for February.

2007-01-30T08:19:00.000-08:00

The family joke has been that Adam's salsa has curative powers akin to Popeye's spinach. I'm thinking it's not humorous hyperbole anymore. I won't tire you with the details, but it involves a painkiller-resistant migraine, Adam's salsa, a touch of his guacamole and the restoration of me to the living.

2007-01-28T18:58:00.000-08:00

Welcome to "In Kitchen with Me Grimlock."

Me Grimlock your host. You may remember Me Grimlock from such fine programming as "How to Neuter Your Pet for Free" and "Terror of Christmas IV."

Today, Me Grimlock take you step-by-step through happy world of Cuppycake Land!

First Me Grimlock pick out recipe for Red Devil Food Cuppycake. Me Grimlock dino enough for Red Devil food. And cuppycake!

Me Grimlock double-check ingredients.

Me Grimlock mix everything together in kitchen robot. Me Grimlock help kitchen robot with arduous task of stirring. Me Grimlock strong.

Me Grimlock sez just because cuppycakes in cups doesn't mean cuppycakes ready for Me Grimlock's tummy.

Me Grimlock tell purty assistant she hurry up if she know what good. For her. And Me Grimlock.

Me Grimlock always lick bowl.

Me Grimlock revel in cuppycake carnage.

Me Grimlock so happy with cuppycakes, Me Grimlock forget frosting! Me Grimlock LOVE frosting!

Me Grimlock say follow easy steps and you too can be lost in sea of cuppycakes like Me Grimlock!

Me Grimlock say CUPPPYCAAAAAKES!

2007-01-27T14:25:00.000-08:00

I canceled my credit card today for no other reason than I don't want or need it. Adam calls it the most un-American act one can perpetrate in the 21st century, which I think means he's impressed by my chutzpah. I think.

The guy at Citibank seemed surprised that I'd be so rash as to cancel! My! Account! that he offered to tack on an extra two! zeros onto my previous limit. I declined and asked him to please close the account, which he did with no other argument.

I'm free.

This could fall into the great simplification of 2007. Or this could fall into an unspecified anti-consumer-driven-lifestyle category. I haven't decided.

Cutting up the card was liberating. I'd opened that account ten years ago -- one of those "fill out this form for a t-shirt" snags that companies use on college campuses; thank God I only did it once.

I got in trouble with the card once, running up a debt of more than $600, which doesn't sound like a lot in the grand scheme of credit card debt, but I was trying to pay for tuition and housing and incidentals on a bare bones salary, and that debt printed on the line might as well have been all the money in the world. Hell, the minimum payment might as well have been all the money in the world. It took me a couple of years to pay it off, and then a few years more of using the card to make very small purchases I could pay off immediately, to increase my credit rating or some nonsensical thinking.

The specter of the old debt lingered. Every purchase I put on that card would make my stomach knot; even when it was a pound of coffee or tank of gas. So taking the kitchen sheers to the card really did feel like taking a shiv-fashioned-out-of-cafeteria-tray to the warden's soft belly.

Liberating.

2007-01-26T09:37:00.000-08:00

Real fast before I head off to work:

Adam got an e-mail from the Pearl Jam Ten Club announcing a European tour made up of mostly festival dates (which is rather surprising) this summer. So the question becomes do we go to Australia or do we go to Europe? And while we're in Europe, do we go see a concert (or two) and then see an F1 race? Or do we hold off to see if they'll play a few US dates later in the year?

And if we decide to take a wait-and-see approach, does that invalidate what I wrote yesterday, or does it just underscore how wafflesque I really am?

2007-01-25T17:09:00.000-08:00

A new blog discovered, thanks to the Fix: Why the Heck Not? A former Duke City resident by the name of Amy has dropped out of the race to travel the world and is currently heading to Australia and you'd better believe my eyes are crossed with the jellies.

And the title of the blog has merged with Pearl Jam in my mind, so I'm humming the chorus of "Why Go" which sort of turned into our traveling manta during the Hawaiian Jaunt of '06, with the answer being, of course, "Why the heck not?" (though with a touch saltier language) and now is about the point in the program where I either A) start running some number or B) get very depressed for buying into the bourgeoisie lifestyle that I can't even imagine Life Without Steady Income.

I'm leaning more towards A) because I am big on wallowing in self-pity, but I'm trying not to be as big. If you follow.

Anyway. Why the heck not?

2007-01-24T15:06:00.000-08:00

There's a rumor floating around the intarweb -- one that I haven't bothered Googling for confirmation, mind you -- that Obama's a smoker. Some of my friends have expressed more dismay at the smoking allegation than to his admission he did coke in college.

Me? Not so much. While I do believe Smoking Is Very Bad for You, I'm okay him going where the flavor is. It shows a rebellious streak, a small exercise of personal liberty, a tiny metaphorical flip-off to the idea of the granola left wing. I like a touch of the contrary in presidental candidates.

Smoking shouldn't be as dismaying as coke use. One's legal, though kind of smelly and disgusting. One involves both the phrase "now we add the gasoline" and being smuggled into the country via swallowed Trojans.

It's not even a contest.

2007-01-21T17:51:00.000-08:00

After being house-bound since the middle of last Thursday, I welcomed this morning because I felt well enough to get out for a little while. Granted "out" meant a trip to Walgreen's, but it's a beginning.

I engaged in all those post-ick ceremonies of recovery: there was the long, hot shower and the extra time spent with the hair dryer; real clothes instead of the fuzzy monkey pants and eye makeup. Oh em gee, I actually smeared on some eye makeup.

It all fell apart after we got home, but I was a functioning human being for a few hours today.

The upshot is that I'm feeling better, if not 100%. But better is something.

(Not that I should have been in any hurry to recover. It's snowing again.)

2007-01-19T19:58:00.000-08:00

Addendum to the standard protocol: antibiotics, ibuprofen, liquids, quarantine and regular applications of Arrested Development and sushi. AD and sushi are a very important part of the healing process.

I'm feeling better relative to yesterday, decent enough to turn on the news and see what was happening in the world.

According to the intarweb, King Bill's running. This is awesome, not because I am reduced to fangirlish fawning whenever he's in the building (that is reserved for when Bingaman comes around; St. Pete is met with quiet awe, or quiet or awe, but mostly quiet). No. This isn't the fan girl in me. This is bigger than my inner politico geek. This is going to be great for the state. Are you kidding me? This is going to raise the 505's profile. Until he is washed out in a wave on Super Tuesday (. . . whaaaa?), Richardson will be the face of New Mexico, and I am looking forward to the hundreds of interviews featuring the fifth graf nugget: "New Mexico was the 47th state to enter the union, and has not been a part of Mexico for over 150 years."

Seriously. Chocolate-covered banana for every reference you find.

Also, there's supposed to be a snow storm? Headed straight for us? Has Albuquerque dead in its sites? Anyone else heard of this?

That's all I've got. I'm popping some Advil and going to bed.

2007-01-18T19:12:00.000-08:00

Dear People With Whom I Have Been in Occasional Contact Over This Past Week:

I owe you an apology. Unbeknownst to everyone, I have been spewing strep germs the way an Ebola-infected monkey flings pooh. I'm sorry. Unless, of course, you're the person who tagged me with the yuck, in which case, I'm not sorry, I loathe you.

Either way, disinfect.

It's the standard: antibiotics, ibuprofen, liquids and quarantine. I'm miserable. Could be worse, though. Could be the Spanish Flu.

See you when I'm feeling human.

2007-01-17T08:29:00.000-08:00

This morning on Duke City Fix, there was a post on comfort food, and the resulting comments thread had turned into a two item (as of this posting) list of "food you can't find," but one of those items was hot Hatch red enchilada sauce, which reminded me of a recipe I wanted to share.

And by "recipe," I mean "logical concoction we threw together last Saturday that was bliss in a bowl."

It goes like this: brown a hunk of hamburger (about a pound) and some diced onion in a 12" skillet. Season with garlic and onion and cumin and salt and some red chile powder to taste. When the meat's brown, slop over a can of red enchilada sauce and bring to a simmer. Meanwhile, heat up some refried beans in the microwave, which takes about as long as you need to warm the sauce. Throw beans and red sauce into a bowl, top with a generous handful of mozzarella, give a stir and eat with a warmed flour tortilla if you're so inclined.

It's, oh, it is so very good.

2007-01-15T10:26:00.000-08:00

We've had an ongoing state of the union conversation this weekend. Not that this particular union's in any danger of hanging an abolitionist or firing on Fort Sumter nor have we split into factions of cavilers and roundheads. No, no, no. The state of the union is strong.

The conversation has been about location. The union tires of the western suburbs of Albuquerque. The union craves adventure! Excitment! (The union is not a jedi, so it's allowed) The union wants to live life like it's gonna die, because it's gonna. The union can't define itself without reaching for pop culture cliches, but that's another post for another time.

It's a loopy conversation, which starts out with, "Well, we'll put the house on the market" and runs through a cycle of "where do you want to live" "well I don't know, where do you want to live" followed by a list of possible relocations:

Downtown
Nob Hill
UNM Law area or
Australia

That last one might add some time onto the commute, but it's a hit I'm willing to take.

We've actually talked about living in a foreign country for years, and I've always voted for the antipodes, though we've toyed with the idea of Great Britain (no), Italy (no), Germany (nein) and Calgary (despite Lisa, Dex, Jen and Scott all being up there, sadly, we're just not cut out for a life in the great white north), though you might have noticed we've never actually moved. Just the opposite, in fact. We bought a house, we kept our jobs, we put down roots.

Moving within the city would be a confirmation of yes, this is where we are going to live our lives. This is where we will someday raise a family, and this is where we'll die. Moving within the city would be a vote of confidence in Albuquerque. For. Ever.

But.

There is a very, very large world out there, just itching to be discovered and explored. Which brings us to the second loop of the conversation, which goes "do we go visit first or do we do like the ancestors and get on a boat blind?" (except, in this case, we'd take Qantas and only our stuff would take the boat.)

On the one hand, we are two very picky people. There are only narrow swaths of this country where we would condescend to live, and each time we go out into the world, we return to Albuquerque with a sigh of relief and a promise of never leaving, so visiting Australia would be wise.

On the other hand, none of the ancestors knew what the hell they were getting into when they climbed into those rickety wooden boats and made the leap across the pond, and everything turned out well enough that I'm writing this from the comfort of the 21st century, so what's a little adventure? What's a little flyin' blind in the face of a great and wonderful adventure?

Or we could buy that house on 8th and never have to worry about going without green chile for the rest of our lives.

It's a looping, loopy conversation. I think the most we've managed to hash out is an agreement of saving all of our cash and heading down later this year to check things out. Whether or not we come back is another matter.

Or we could buy that house on 8th.

2007-01-12T08:14:00.000-08:00

(After we watched the weather broadcast twice)

Adam: You know, you're gonna have to change the weather dude's name in your blog. You can't be using them two dollar english major words any more. He's too nerdy.

Sarah: Is this because of the Star Wars copyright infringing crawl?

Adam: Yes. It was the awesome.

Sarah: Do you want to storm the station and chant "one of us, one of us?"

Adam: Yes.

Sarah: Okay, nerdmeyer, what should I call him?

Adam: Wedge. Wedge the Weather Dude.

Sarah: Nerd.

2007-01-11T09:13:00.000-08:00

Another Thursday, another promise/hedge on weekend snow from Hyperbole the Weather Dude.

I've got my eye set on that big red L. It had better stay to the north if it knows what's good for it. And no, I haven't figured out how to take a hit out on low pressure, but I'll think of something.

2007-01-10T13:33:00.000-08:00

When I am Dictator of Albuquerque #36

All motorists over the age of 70 will have their licenses pulled, pending approval by the Maybe We'll Let You Drive Taskforce. To get your license back, you would have to pass a driving test administered by a taskforce team member, and it wouldn't be one of those simple "drive-around-the-block-and-back-up" dealies they run at the MVD. No sir. It'd be an all day endeavor, where you'd be forced to drive on the freeway and major city streets. Any failure to keep up with traffic, change lanes, stay within your chosen lane or make a traffic-related decision without wavering would be met with a license denial.

Because seriously? As there is no crying in baseball, there is no putting/braking on Paseo.

Live it. Learn it.

-the dictator

2007-01-08T13:10:00.000-08:00

The cat is my constant companion.

On Mondays, I go into work later, running a swing shift before returning to more civilized hours, which means I have a morning and half the afternoon to putter around the house and work on projects before I head out into the world to make my living.

The cat, who is an only cat, adores this extra time, because it means she's only left alone for two or three hours. If she is not perched on some part of a warm person, she gets lonesome; I've been in the bedroom folding laundry before only to hear her cry in the stairwell. Poor kitten.

So I call down to her and she comes bounding up the stairs, all conversation and sits on Adam's pillow, watching me put away laundry until I'm finished and prepared to sit down and provide her with a cozy lap and some typing.

The cat loves typing. Not the actual doing of it, what would a cat say? but the sound of the tip-tap of the keyboard, and the feel of my arms trying to maintain 60 wpm while being pressed down by her little kitty bulk. Her favorite spot in the entire world is draping herself across my forearms, blocking my view of the keyboard and most of the computer screen, and then having me type. If I'm just surfing, or not typing enough, she gets persnickity and a touch bitey.

She's like having an in-house deadline enforcer. I've been able to make progress on the current revision because of her. And I like having her intruding and reading over my shoulder. The weight is comforting. The warmth, especially in winter, is nice. And the built-in vibration feature is a bonus.

Not that I'm trying to turn this into a cat blog, or think that I'm the only person in the world whose wrists have been co-opted by a feline. More, this is an SOS because my cat is holding me hostage to my work and I kind of have to pee.

Help.

2007-01-07T21:13:00.000-08:00

While it did snow enough to coat the Civic, it did not snow enough for Snow Jabba to gain a Snow Han Solo Frozen in Carbonite. It was your typical Albuquerque storm, thank god. Snowed in the night, covered the cars, looked pretty and had the decency to melt off by noon.

Now that's what I'm talking about.

2007-01-05T13:06:00.000-08:00

The Love . . .

The Alameda branch of Satellite Coffee was pouring a wicked good Yemen bean for their Brew of the Moment this morning. Scrounge around for you frequent drinker card and tally-ho it across the river before the snow hits. It wins the Holy Friggin' Crap, Dude award of the day.

I've been trying to keep the winter blahs away by listening to the 12/2/06 Pearl Jam show. I mean, we were there. In Hawaii. A month ago. And it was a fantastic concert, one of the best shows they played last year. And now it's sitting on my iPod. For ten bucks, it could be sitting on your iPod. (I've also been loving on the Lisbon shows, Verona and Gorge 1, should you decide you want to stalk me to the point of co-opting my musical tastes)

"Men in Trees" (Thursdays 9 p.m. on ABC) proves if I say in 2004 "They should really bring back 'Northern Exposure'" while watching an episode of "Sex and the City," the gods will listen, mix the concepts and put it on ABC two years later.

Christopher Moore. My friend Duane gave me a copy of "Bloodsucking Fiends" a couple of years ago, which I loaned to Adam during the emergency vacation, which he loved, which prompted us to buy "Lamb" and "The Stupidest Angel" while still on vacation, which turned into "Practical Demonkeeping" and "The Island of the Sequined Love Nun" under the tree. And now the sequel to "Fiends," "You Suck" comes out a week from Tuesday. Yowzers.

The Fix kept me sane through last week's snowstorm, and I'm not just saying that because I was quoted there.

And I can't stop playing with Flickr.

The love, people. It's the love.

2007-01-03T19:55:00.000-08:00

It's supposed to snow again on Friday night.

Now, Hyperbole the Weather Dude is assuring us that this one? Not gonna be as bad as last week. Which is what he said last week in reference to the previous week's storm.

Are you panicking yet?

I think the technical term is "screwed."

Personally, I'm imagining 11-foot drifts, snowmen of the abominable variety, dog teams, and polar bears delivering the mail. (And then eating people who complain about their mail not showing up until after dark.) (Don't mess with the polar bears who deliver your mail.) (Yes, polar bears. What else are they going to do when the ice cap melts?)

Since we're looking another freakin' weekend housebound and snowed-in, it's time to put together another survival list, and just pray Raley's is only 75% picked-over tomorrow.

And I'm not talking about picking up cans of stuff that usually end up in the food donation box around the holidays, where one is, by the second night of staring into the pantry and saying, "Well, we've got corn." That's not going to cut it this go around. Do you hear me, Hyperbole? Not this go around!

Tonight is a time to hunker down with the Gourmet cookbook (also simply known as the yellow book) and do some serious menu planning. It's time to sketch out an elaborate weekend of cooking and eating and cleaning and cleaning and cooking and then looking at what we made and poking it and muttering about going to Slate Street. It is time to remember that a snowbound weekend is best passed with booze. Booze and DVDs. Booze and DVDs we haven't seen forty-nine million times. And cold remedies. Adam still has the sniffles.

Anyone know of a grocery store in town still stocked with eggs?