It Could Only Happen to Me

When strange things happen to me, they happen in clumps. I can go for weeks, nay months, without weirdness, then BANG. Weird.

This afternoon, I noticed a fly in my office.den.computer room. Not weird, you say? I have never had a fly in my house in the four years I've lived here, let alone upstairs. Not only that, I eventually noticed there were two huge ass flies instead of just one hyperactive fly as I had originally thought.

Weird number two was that my shower wouldn't drain. I grant you, that's not so weird, but it is out of the ordinary for my tub.

Here's the biggy. Before I went upstairs to get ready to go out for the evening, I went to close my front door and noticed one of my patio chairs was slightly off center. I'm anal about that sort of thing. So, I opened my storm door with the intention of reaching my foot outside to tilt the patio chair ever so slightly to the right.

When I pushed open the storm door, the whole door came apart in my hand. The handle and door frame it was attached to briefly stayed upright while the glass fell forward. It all happened in slow motion. As the weight of the handle and door frame became too heavy for me to hold, I watched the glass fall forward toward the concrete. I couldn't move. I stood there helplessly waiting for the crash of the glass on my patio and the inevitable pain of glass shrapnel embedding itself into delicate parts of my anatomy.

But, it didn't break.

The glass door fell in one big piece on top of the broken door frame. I stood there and looked at it and started to laugh. The part of the door frame with the pneumatic cylinder and hinges was still attached to my house while the other part, including the glass panel, laid ever so delicately on my patio. I've been Windexing that glass for five years and always assumed it was glass. I know it's not plastic, so I assume it's some sort of weird alien hybrid.

Don't you wish your girlfriend was weird like me?

Local Music Guide

Local Music Guide has a new site and it looks great. Go there for information on southeast Texas music events. If you have a musical act, contact them and get listed.

Tonight, check out Rodgers & LeMasters on the patio at Crazy Jose's in Beaumont from 6:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. (Click here for Dick LeMasters' solo MySpace page and more original music.)

At Crazy Jose's, I highly recommend the Eduardo margarita. I'm not sure if that's the name of it but, if you say "Eduardo," the waitress brings you something magically delicious.

Yoga

Hatha Yoga

Otis Campbell Yoga

Good Name for a Band?

I just received a piece of spam mail with the subject line:

Nuclear Eggplant

CLICK HERE...THEN WAIT...THEN MOUSE OVER THE CIRCLE...THEN CLICK AGAIN

No wonder my feet hurt

I wore heels to work today which weren't nearly as high as the ones below, but still...

Yippie-Ki-Yay, etc.

Grand-Fabulous-Baby On the Way Rules

My daughter-in-law will be giving birth to my first grand-fabulous-baby any day now. Since Cory and Jamie live about two hours away from both Grand-Fabulous-Mother Laurie (me) and Grand-Fabulous-Mother Lisa (Jamie's mom), we have had to make a few rules.

• Because of caller ID, the first words we hear after answering any calls from Jamie's cell phone, Cory's cell phone or Cory and Jamie's house must be "Not yet."
• If Grand-Fabulous-Mother Laurie is out and about with friends, she must, at all times, have a driver on standby ready, willing and able to drive her to Houston on a moment's notice in the likely event that she is more than halfway through her second margarita.
• Grand-Fabulous-Mother Lisa has agreed to indulge in no more than two gin and tonics in any given evening while lounging by her new Grand-Fabulous-Pool.

That's it. Just your normal everyday Grand-Fabulous-Mother rules. Edina and Patsy would be proud.

,,,but they lie...

NOW you tell me?

I woke up Saturday morning with the intention of weeding the three small flower/weed beds on my patio. When I saw how many weeds there were, I decided it would be easier to drive across town to Lowes, buy several bags of pine bark, load the bags into my trunk, drive all the way home, unload the bags and spread them into the flower/weed beds than to pull all those weeds.

When I got to Lowes, I wandered around a while until I found what I wanted because I hate pushing those huge-ass flatbed carts around while I'm shopping. They're hard to handle and I feel like everybody's looking at me. After I decided on which pine bark, landscaping stones and trellises I wanted, I found one of those aforementioned huge-ass flatbed carts and began pushing it to the back of the garden area where they keep the big bags of landscaping materials.

I pushed the cart about one foot and immediately wanted to bolt from the store. This had to be the noisiest cart in the history of carts. Everybody in the garden area turned to look at me. I had no choice but to hold my head up and press on. The more I pushed the louder the cart became. It didn't help that I had to walk the length of a football field with my bellowing cart to get to the back of the store. Even little old ladies and children were giving me dirty looks.

When I reached the back of the garden center, I loaded the damn cart with four sacks of pine bark, three sacks of marble chips and one trellis. I thought these might stabilize the cart and make it less noisy. While the cart was a little less noisy, it was now almost impossible for me to push.

Even with my freakishly strong upper body strength, I had to push the still noisy cart with my whole body leaning forward at a forty-five degree angle digging in with my legs like a linebacker. I finally made it to the checkout area and paid for my stuff. However, when I tried to push the cart out to the parking lot, it got caught on a tiny dip in the concrete.

The cashier looked at my cart and said, "Oh, you got that broken cart. We've been trying to get rid of that thing."

"Yeah," added the other cashier, "I thought they put it in the back."

"The front wheels are broken," said the Lowe's guy who helped me get the broken cart over the dip in the concrete. "See, the right wheel doesn't turn and neither of them have any rubber on them."

"Well, slap my ass and call me biscuit. That's a little bit of information I could have used about an hour ago," I said.

I didn't really say that.

I wish I had said that.

But, I didn't.

I didn't say anything that I really, really, desperately, really wanted to say. There were too many little old ladies and children around.

Tone Loc Non-Review

For a couple of months now, I've been excited to see Tone Loc at Antone's. Before my sister left for a mini-vacation, she reminded me that her and her husband's 25th wedding anniversary was this week and for me to e-mail everybody to meet us out at Crockett Street.

I got to Rio Rita's at the appointed time and a few people eventually showed up with the guests of honor arriving about an hour later because of, let's say, complications. Since they got there so late and it had gotten so crowded, there was going to be an hour wait for a table. So, instead of the Mexican food I had my mouth set on all week, I ate a club sandwich at the Star Bar. If you ever want a club sandwich, go to the Star Bar. It was delicious.

At the Star Bar on Friday nights, there are usually trivia contests and an 80's dance contest. However, since Tone Loc was supposed to come up after his show at Antone's there was no dance contest and only three trivia questions were asked. According to the DJ, the main reason for the trivia contest is to keep everyone interested enough in what's going on that they enter the dance contest. Who knew?

All night long, I tried to convince people to go with me to Antone's to watch Tone Loc for even just a couple of songs but nobody would go with me. I have no problem with doing stuff like that by myself but I hadn't seen some of our friends who were with us in a while and that would have just been rude.

"Oh, well," I thought, "At least Tone Loc is going to come up here later." So, we waited. Then, we waited some more. At about 1:00 a.m. as I was coming out of the restroom, I had to stop as an entourage of people rushed by me toward the exit. I took a step back, looked up, and, by God, there was Tone Loc...leaving. He had, evidently, walked in, looked around and left. (I was only in the restroom about five minutes.) My sister and her husband and our friends, who were sitting at our tables near the stage/DJ booth, never even knew he had come into the club.

In summary,

• No Mexican food or margaritas
• No trivia contest or dance contest
• No Tone Loc or Funky Cold Medina.

However,

• One of the best club sandwiches I have ever eaten
• Good friends and lots and lots of laughs
• The Universe came through once again and let me have a very brief up close moment with Tone Loc.

He loves to do the Wild Thing, you know.

Sure, but only on Friday...

Don't Ask, Don't Tell

I have this picture on the wall beside my desk. Bill Murray points at me all day telling me how much I suck.

A co-worker came into my office in a huff a little while ago and asked me to e-mail her a copy so she could e-mail it to her husband.

I didn't ask.

Grand-Fabulous-Bib!

In about three weeks, I will have my first Grand-Fabulous-Baby. I decided early on that I would not be a Grandmother. I will be a Fabulousmother. That has sort of morphed into Grand-Fabulous-Mother.

Last weekend when some of us from the office were at Crazy Jose's drinking margaritas, eating Mexican food and listening to Rodgers & LeMasters on the patio, someone decided that Peggy should go into the business of making leather bibs for Grand-Fabulous-Babies. I can't remember whose idea it was or what even started the conversation. I do remember that the margaritas were very, very good.

Well, Peggy listens well and made me and my Grand-Fabulous-Baby the Grand-Fabulous-Bib you see above. I can't wait to fashion a Grand-Fabulous-Do-Rag for my Grand-Fabulous-Baby to match its Grand-Fabulous-Bib.

Thanks, Peggy!