December 21, 2011

We're one year away from Mayan-Hold-Onto-Your-Asses Day.  So, to paraphrase Prince, "Party like it's one more year until Mayan-Hold-Onto-Your-Asses Day."

My Morning

• 7:30 a.m. Power went out as I sat down to my makeup mirror
• 7:30 a.m. Large stuffed animal fell out of a chair in my office beside my bathroom at the exact same time the lights went out 
• 7:32 a.m. Packed up things to finish getting ready at work
• 7:33 a.m. Continued to flip light switches even though I knew the power was out
• 7:36 a.m. Left for work with wet hair and no makeup
• 7:37 a.m. Tried to close garage door with garage door opener like an idiot
• 7:37 a.m. Got out of car to close garage door manually and smelled smoke
• 7:37 a.m. Freaked out
• 7:38 a.m.  No smoke pouring out of my townhouse or any others around me
• 7:38 a.m.  Stopped freaking out
• 7:39 a.m.  Drove to work
• 7:40 a.m. Tuned radio to local station to try to find out why there was a power outage and smoke in the air and heard disc jockeys talking about "alternate paths" and "we'll be out there later"
• 7:41 a.m. Freaked out 
• 7:42 a.m. I realized the disc jockeys were talking about the path for a procession for a local soldier who died in Afghanistan  (RIP)
• 7:46 a.m  Tried to pull into the parking lot at work, but there was a man walking two huge black Great Danes and a lady was blocking my path into the parking lot, I assume, out of fear of the dogs.  She wouldn't move left or right, forward or backward.  She just stood there.  MOVE dammit!
• 7:50 a.m.  Walked into my office to find two co-workers already there who never get to work before me.  Never.

Weird ass morning.

Cicada shedding it's shell

My daughter-in-law took this picture this morning of a cicada shedding it's shell. Look at the part that was covering its eyes.  Freaky!  Now, I can't get "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" out of my head.

"...or, maybe it's a rat."

When the exterminator was here the other day, he said the words, "...or, maybe it's a rat."  I'm not sure exactly what he said, because I sort of blacked out after that.

Last night, I got home from visiting my grand-fabulous-babies and noticed my rug in front of my stove was askew.  At first, I thought I moved it when I pushed my kitchen island out of the way to put my Lean Cuisine's in the freezer...the ones I bought because I left my freezer open yesterday...if you're keeping track.

So, I grabbed the rug and pulled it straight and it had been gnawed, about six inches toward the center of the rug in some parts, along the edge that had been under my stove.  Sonofabitch.  What the hell kind of varmint do I have that is strong enough to pull a rug.  Granted, it's a flexible rubber cushiony rug (that I spent $20 damn dollars on two months ago), but still.  That ain't no mouse.

I banged on the drawer to scare away whatever gnawed the rug and then pulled the drawer out.  At the back of the wall under my stove, there is a hole around the electrical wiring for the stove.  Bingo.  That's where the furry bastard is getting in.  There were pieces of the rug scattered about, but no nest, thank you Baby Jesus.

I slept last night, when I did sleep, with my bedroom door closed and a pair of blue jeans stuffed under the door. I had bad dreams all night, mostly about married people having affairs in the front seat of my car while I was driving and the people in the back seat of my car thought I was stupid to be annoyed by that.  What that has to do with vermin infestations, I do not know.

An interesting thing I discovered about having a mouse in your house is that everybody has a story.  Even the lady at the pest control place who answers the phone told me her story.  It's one of those little secrets that people don't talk about. 

When I had a ghost in my house, at first I was hesitant to tell people.  I soon found out that every single person I speak to about it has a personal ghost story.  It's comforting, in a creepy sort of way, to find out that everyone also has a "I had a gotdamn mouse in my house" story, too.

What do hubcaps and blackheads have in common?

Yesterday, I brought my car to the Bay Bright Car Wash on Dowlen Road here in Beaumont.  I had heard good things about it, but I must have missed the part about having to stay in my car as it's being pulled through the scrubbers and sprayers.  As I sat trapped in my car at the mercy of the big scary machines, I imagined myself being crushed, drowned and electrocuted.  It seems the older I get, the more neurotic I get.  Something else to look forward to.

When I reached the end of Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, I pulled into one of the bays where my car would be detailed.  I was barely out of my seat when the guy assigned to my car sprinted toward me with some sort of spray bottle.  I got out of the way and walked across the driveway to some benches and watched him work like a fiend on the inside of my car. 

When he finished the inside, he moved on to the hubcaps.  I have hubcaps like the one in the picture above.  In the seven years I've owned this car, I've never cleaned inside those little holes.  I watched amazed as the guy cleaned each little hole on each hubcap.  At each hole he would scrub, look at his towel and scrub again until every piece of gunk inside that hole had been vanquished.  I wanted to walk over to him and say, "Dude.  Seriously.  That is totally not necessary," but, I was afraid if I did, he might give me a Travis Bickle "You talkin' to me?" and beat me with the vacuum cleaner hose.  So, I let him scrub.

As I watched Travis Bickle clean out each little hole, I thought about the time my brother e-mailed me about his first experience with Biore strips.  At the time, he was telecommuting from home several days a week and enjoyed e-mailing me about his cushy life as I sat in my cruddy office.  On this particular morning, he was sitting at his computer in his boxer shorts and a t-shirt with a Biore strip, which he had found in his wife's side of the medicine cabinet, resting across the bridge of his nose. 

Later, when he pulled the Biore strip off his nose, he e-mailed me that he was sure that some of the gunk on the strip was from a football game he played in 1978.  I'm sure that some of the dirt that guy got out of my hubcap holes was from a beach trip I took in 2005.

When my car was finally ready, I said goodbye to my fellow carwash waiting people, tipped the detail dude and drove away flicking dirt into my little hubcap holes.  See you next month, Mr. Bickle. 

Stairway to Heaven...or is it?

At this time last year, I was taking safety courses in anticipation of my misguided attempt to work for a contractor inside a refinery.  Even though I was only going to be working inside a condemned trailer doing data entry, I still had to be safety certified.  The classes and testing lasted longer than my entire refinery working experience. 

Part of the safety orientation involved heights.  It didn't matter that I was never going to be higher than my 5 foot 4 inch height.  I still had to take the class and the test if I was going to be working inside the plant. 

I do not like heights.  That's putting it mildly.  I hate heights.  Worse than my fear of heights is my fear of falling off of heights.

I can promise you with every fiber of my being that I will never, never, never do this...

Say My Name, Say My Name, Say My Name

I do not know this man nor do I know if he will or will not make a fine Republican National Commitee chairman.  What I DO know is that, for some reason, his name makes me want to run screaming into the cold dark night.  I have no explanation for that.  

Reince Priebus. 

Creepy.

.

Year of the huh?

I went to my neighborhood fast food Chinese restaurant/take-out joint.  I wasn't sure what I wanted, so instead of going through the drive-thru like I usually do, I went inside.  While I was waiting for my food, I noticed the wall calendar to the left of where people stand to order their food.

As I read the calendar, I noticed it was for the "Year of the Rat."  Agghh!!  Why would you put a calendar up in a RESTAURANT drawing unnecessary attention to vermin?

Then, I thought, "Shut up, dummy.  It's a cultural difference and you should embrace it instead of criticizing it." 

Then, I noticed the year on the calendar:  2008.  2008.  Nah, that's not a cultural difference, that's just dumb.  Let's leave up a two year old calendar with a big picture of a rat on it where people are ordering their food and in direct view of where people sit to eat.

No. 

Wrong. 

Just wrong.



.

According to Delta Downs, I am a senior citizen...

Exactly one month from today, I will qualify

for the "Senior Buffet" at Delta Downs

racetrack and casino.

W...T...F?

Then THAT happened...

I risk the wrath of my son, mother and every sibling, relative and friend I have to tell you the following story, because it's for your own good.

As I was driving down a deserted street near my house a short while ago, the car in front of me suddenly stopped and the rear door opened.  I reached for the shift to put my car in reverse, because I thought someone was going to get out of the car and attack me or shoot me or just generally freak me out in some way.  Instead of one of the above, a very large girl spilled out of the door and stumbled into the ditch beside the road.  Then, the car drove away.

W...T...F?

I drove a short way, turned onto my street and stopped.  I couldn't just let the girl lay in the ditch, could I?  Could I?  No, I couldn't.  Idiot.  What would a sensible person do?  A sensible person would go home, dial 911 and crouch behind her curtains peering into the evil darkness.  Not me.  I am not a sensible person.  I opened my car door and shouted to her, "Are you okay?"

The girl was making unintelligible grunting sounds which in my freaked out state of mind meant she had been kidnapped, beaten and dumped on the side of the road.  As I considered my next move, the car that had dumped the girl and driven away, came back.

My first thought was that the car came back to pick up the girl and that would be the end of that.  That first thought was erased when I saw that the people in the car had seen me.  As they turned onto my street, I got back into my car and tried to haul ass.

This is the part of the story where I risk the wrath of my family and friends to tell you a very important thing.  If bad people are following you, do not...I repeat...do not drive into your own fucking garage of the very  house in which you actually live.  Be a normal person and pull out your cell phone and calmly drive around as you dial 911 explaining to the police in a very calm voice that possible kidnapper-murderer-rapist-girl dumpers are following you around your neighborhood.

By the time I realized I had been a dumbass by turning into my very own driveway, one of the possible kidnapper-murderer-rapist-girl dumpers had gotten out of their car and was shouting at me.  Holy fuck.  I closed my garage door, ran in the house and dialed 911.

Dispatch told me there was a police car very close to me and that they would first go check on the girl and then come talk to me.  When the officer got to my house, he explained that they had found the girl and all the parties involved where I had last seen the girl, because the possible kidnapper-murderer-rapist-girl dumpers were there trying to get the very intoxicated girl back into the car before somebody called the police. 

I asked, "Are they going to come back to get me?"

The policeman said, "They're all too drunk to know where they are.  The woman in the ditch had been hitting her boyfriend in the car and when they stopped the vehicle to try to make her quit hitting him, she jumped out of the car and fell into the ditch."

I said, "So, they're not going to come get me?"

"No," he said.  "The woman was definitely the aggressor in this whole thing and is going to jail for public intoxication and the rest of them went on their way."

"So, they're not going to come get me?

"No," he repeated.  "They are not going to come get you."

So, here I am.  Safe and sound.  Typing a blog post.  My blogging friends will understand.  In the midst of my fear and panic and anger at myself for being the stupid girl we've all screamed at in every horror movie/ murder mystery we've ever seen, my main thought was, "This is going to make a great blog post."

I Think the Mayans Were Right

Every day I read something on CNN.com that makes me think I'm in the middle of a 1950s horror movie or speeding toward those Mayan priests' predicted end of the world...


Livermore, California (CNN) -- Scientists at a government lab here are trying to use the world's largest laser -- it's the size of three football fields -- to set off a nuclear reaction so intense that it will make a star bloom on the surface of the Earth."

Sure.  Why not?  What could possibly go wrong?


"Scientists at the J. Craig Venter Institute have created a synthetic cell that can survive and reproduce itself according to an artificial DNA sequence, promising designer genomes with which researchers can produce sophisticated artificial organisms."

Create new life forms.  That always turns out well.  Ask Dr. Moreau.


Then, there's the whole monster Blob of oil knocking on my southeast Texas back door.  As if The Blob weren't bad enough, the chemicals being used as dispersants to break up the oil don't give me a warm fuzzy feeling either. 

The latest kick in the head concerning The Blob?  Hurricane season starts next week.  CNN has this to say about that:  "Not only is it hard to track how contaminants would be redistributed by a hurricane, but it's also hard to predict how the slick would affect the storm..."  and this, "...other scientists say the storms could be stronger than usual because the black oil would heat the water faster and accelerate formation of hurricanes...."

Add an earthquake every other week, Korea going nuts all over itself, Jesse James, Kate Gosselin and Janet Jackson's weird hairdo last night on American Idol to all of the above and I'd say we've got trouble.  Big trouble.  Ray Harryhausen caliber trouble.

I hope somebody's out there looking for a King Kong to take care of all these Godzillas.

"I Smell Gas"

A friend of mine called me the other day and said, "The weirdest thing happened to me yesterday."  He was right.  Weird barely describes it.

The day before he called me, he noticed the smell of gasoline as he was getting into his car to leave for work.  He didn't give it much thought and drove on to the office.  As he was leaving his car when he got to work, he could still smell gasoline.  He looked under his car and saw gasoline pouring in a steady stream from somewhere under his car.  It's a new car, so he called the car dealership and they told him they would send someone to get the car.  He told them he would drive the car to them.

"You DROVE a car that was leaking gasoline?  That was POURING gasoline?"  I asked.  "You weren't afraid someone would throw a cigarette out of their window and blow you up?!"

"Yeah,"  he said.  "I didn't think about that until later."

"What about the gas in the parking lot?  Did you call somebody to clean it up?  Did you tell anybody?"

Did I mention that we work in the same building?  Which we also share with the FBI?

He said, "I didn't think about that until later, too.  Somebody could have dropped a cigarette ten feet away and blown up the whole parking lot, if not the whole building.  It could have been an international incident!  My family would have been left to prove I wasn't some sort of crazed FBI hating suicide bomber."

"Holy shit!"  I said.

"Then, as I was driving to the dealership, it suddenly occured to me that I was trailing gasoline down 11th Street and somebody with a lit match or dragging a muffler could be in for a big surprise."

"But, you made it, obviously."

"Yeah, I made it.  When I got to the dealership, they told me the leak was coming from ABOVE my fuel tank and that they thought they knew what it was and wanted me to stay to see it myself, because this had happened before and people don't usually believe them when they tell them why their car is leaking gas."

"And...?"

"So, they start taking my car apart.  Did you know the fuel tank is in under the seat in the middle of your back seat?"

"Uh, NO!"

"Uh.  YEAH."

"That doesn't seem safe," I said.

"When they took the seat out, they showed me the fuel line...chewed through."

"What the fuck?"

"A rodent.  Either a mouse or a rat or a squirrel.  Who knows.  A rodent.  They said it happens all the time."

"I never heard of such a thing," I told him.

"Me neither."

"Well,"  I said, "I'm glad you didn't get blown up.  Or blow me up.  Or blow up the FBI."

"Rats.  Squirrels.  Mice.  Crazy."

"Crazy."

Baletaci

Thanks, Cammie.

Ain't that just grand?

Ain't this just the icing on the shit-cake that was 2009?

Rumors are swirling that Simon Cowell will leave American Idol after this season. Paula is already gone. I don't like change, but it keeps being thrust upon me. Bastards.

Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins are splitting up after 23 years. I hate, hate, hate hearing things like that. Hate it.

Conway, Arkansas...weird

Conway is a small town in Arkansas just north of Little Rock. There is no reason in the world that I should have ever heard of Conway, Arkansas, yet three of my favorite things are associated with Conway...

1. One of my favorite singer/songwriters Hayes Carll went to college there and speaks of it often during his shows.
2. Last year's American Idol, Kris Allen, is from Conway.
3. My nephew started college there this year.

Isn't that weird? I think that's weird.

"We could all do this...!"

My mom sent me this video. Watch it all the way to the end.

My sister Terry said, "We could all do this and quit our day jobs!"

I said, "We'd HAVE to quit our day jobs, because we'd all be in traction."

Dad Update and a Disease Map Just for You

Dad Update

Dad's still doing good and one of his nurses is helping him exercise more and had some good suggestions for mom for exercising him between the physical therapy visits. We're still not sure when mom and dad get to go home, because they want him to be strong enough for us to handle him and want to be sure he's still healthy after the infection he had and the round of chemo he just finished.

A Disease Map Just for You

Click here for a map guaranteed to make you lose sleep. It's the delightful "Global Disease Map." If I can't sleep, nobody sleeps.

That's What I Get for Eavesdropping

This morning as I was walking into my building, I heard a lady coming up behind me talking agitatedly on her cell phone. At first, I thought she was arguing with somebody. So, of course, I really turned on my none-of-my-business-but-I'm-going-to-listen-anyway radar.

As she got closer to me, however, I realized she was talking about some tragedy that I had, obviously, missed hearing on the news on my way to work. We got on the elevator and in the four floors before she got off, I grew more and more agitated myself.

She was speaking about people going up to the roof and jumping to their deaths and telling the person on the other end of the phone how awful it was. I was about to interrupt her and ask what the hell she was talking about when she told her friend, as she exited the elevator...

"I just can't imagine why I would dream something like that."

Something Else to Worry About - Gulf Coast Tsunami?

I just saw on the news that there was a 7.1 magnitude earthquake in Honduras a short while ago and there are tsunami concerns.

My first thought was, "Oh, my."

My second thought was, "Wait. A tsunami in the Caribbean or Gulf of Mexico could affect...me."

When I think about tsunamis, I think about Thailand, Japan, Godzilla...you know...not here. Can seawalls and levees hold back a tsunami? How far inland would a tsunami go? I suppose that depends on where and how strong the quake is, but I want details. I want charts and graphics. I want warning.

The only good thing about hurricanes is that we coastal residents usually have plenty of warning before landfall. Earthquake? That's a California thing. Tsunami? Not here.

Crap.

Feel the Rush!

A friend of mine recently tried the above pictured Extreme Energy 6-Hour Shot. He came into the room and said, "I don't feel so good." I said, "You're all red. What's wrong?" He said, "I drank one of those energy shot drink things." Then, he ran out of the room.

He returned with the box and we began to read the ingredients which include the usual vague references to energetic sounding herbs and vitamins and weirdness. My friend is one of the most calm people I've ever known. When things are going crazy around us, he's the voice of reason. He was freaking out. It was pretty damn funny.

He said his heart was pounding and his eyes felt weird. I asked him how his left arm felt and he said he couldn't feel his left arm. I think he was kidding. I think.

After about twenty minutes, he started feeling fairly normal, so I did the usual Laurie thing. I Googled. Other peoples' experiences with the Shot range from "no big deal" to emergency room visits. Google it yourself. Some of the stories are unintentionally hilarious.

The Shots come in a two pack. So, of course, we're trying to convince someone to take the other shot. However, the problem is that whenever someone says they'll take it, my friend chickens out and won't let them do it. The trick is going to be to find someone we dislike enough that we'll enjoy watching them self combust. That's harder than it sounds.