I sold my baby

I drove my Contour to work today. It’s been a while since I drove her last, and I haven’t driven her reguarly since June. As we zip along Hamilton Road with my A-tag dangling on the rear-view mirror, I hope that she isn’t mad at me for what I am about to do. At noon, I am going to hand over the keys for a cashier’s check. I am going to sell my baby.

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“We didn’t trade her in; we’re going to try to sell her ourselves.”

This is from the linked post of July 8, 2004. That was eight months ago — to the day. I never would have thought it would take this long for us to sell my car. Hindsight is twenty-twenty, as the expression goes. At least Steven and I learned something about ourselves from the whole car-selling experience: WE WILL NEVER SELL A CAR ON OUR OWN EVER AGAIN.

After all, it did take us eight long months to finally find a buyer. All the moving and job-hunting that has gone on over the past fall and winter didn’t help any, either. An advert on cars.com only brought in uninterested callers and one smartass car salesman from Mississippi. We never could get the ball rolling until I posted some car ads around the University last month. Proof again that the best advertising is of the free sort.

I’m proud of this advert; I am told it amused many people.

By the end of the week we had two guys lined up to test drive the car. The car had other ideas — she refused to start that morning. After much cursing and gesturing, all we could do was apologize to the first interested party and say, “I’m so sorry, but the car won’t start this morning.” It was a very humbling moment, but surprisingly we were able to fix the car with five good dollars spent at AutoZone — this was the climatic finish to a whole ‘nother battery story — and made it to the next appointment.

Soon we had three offers for the car. One was a low-ball pitch after a grand exaggeration of petty faults, one was from the very forgiving first party for whom the car wouldn’t start the first go-around, and one that just drove off with my car today. He promised he would take good care of my baby.

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Bye, Raspberry Beret. I close my eyes and see us parking outside of my dorm window. I check my watch: it’s exactly two hours and twenty-two seconds from Alabaster to Auburn. We didn’t know it was illegal to park there.

I see us driving to Fort Payne that first time; the morning DJs are debating during their review of Ice Age. I quite liked that movie. We’re driving through the cut in the mountain.

I see us driving from Scottsboro with a very tiny Renton in the passenger seat. I tell him that he’ll like my apartment and that I love him. He mews. You fly across Sand Mountain towards home.

I see us driving in circles at the Thompson High School parking lot; it’s pouring rain and I don’t have my contacts in. We’re on a test drive. I’m thinking I like you. The song is playing on the radio.

FartdueFondue

Recently we have embarked on a new leisure activity with our friends in the form of a fondue pot. Yes, we have gone old-school 70s style minus the disco and atrocious avocado-colored decor. We gather once every week or two and settle in for a long, social meal. There is much laughter to be had. Especially when one farts.

Which brings me to . . .

Have you ever seen Shawn of the Dead? If you haven’t, you must do so, it is excellent. In the movie one of the characters was prone to deadly, silent farts, which he would acknowledge to his buddy, Shawn, with variants of, “I’m sorry, Shawn. No, I’m really sorry,” until Shawn perceived, or smelled, what was going on and gave in to laughter, despite himself. It’s a running joke that we’ve taken up to using amongst ourselves.

Back to the fondue: just such a fondue was going on at our place yesterday evening. During the main course, I leaned over to snag some chicken when I decided to release a bit o’ air, forgetting Mr. Carlin’s famous advice of releasing a “test fart” first.

“Fzzztttt–bluh-bluh-bluh-bluh-bluh-woosh . . .”

Everyone was talking so loud I almost pulled it off. Almost. Perceptive Steven, though, knew what I did, gave me a funny look, and backed away a bit.

“Ohhh, so that’s what that was!” Lisa exclaimed.

Now I’m in a silent fit of laughter with tears leaking out of my eyes.

“What do we say, Carrie?” someone — I think Ken — said.

I couldn’t get the words out but I summed up all my effort to mouth, “I’m sorry, Shawn!”

And thus is a typical night of fondue, friends, and farting.

summary of random thoughts flying through my head

For those of you that don’t know — and I’m sure most of you do — all the house stuff is chugging along as planned. We’ve signed a contract with the closing date of March 28th and are working toward settling the financing and finding a subleaser. If you’re interested, pop over here and have a look at some pictures I took of our potential new home.

I say ‘potential’ cause any-bloody-thing can happen until the closing process is over and done with, and I don’t want to get too shattered if a cow falls out of the sky and totals Steven’s car . . . or something similarly unexpected. So, Operation Potential House House is off and running.

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Work — oh, how nice it is to say that! — is going rather well. Next week is advising week and then I shall be busy, but I’m looking forward to it. Being bored is not fun. I’m still getting used to the fact that my former professors are now my co-workers. It is just plain bizarre. Cool, but bizarre, bizarre, bizarre.

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Now let’s briefly draw attention to the coolness of the word ‘bizarre.’ It looks original and has an excellent sound, what with the buzzing and all. Fabulous word.

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And before I go to Birmingham for the weekend, I leave you with this thought: “Happiness is an income tax return deposited into your bank account.”

Not that I speak from experience or anything.

It’s been a long week.

invention

Someday I’m going to invent high-heeled shoes that not only give you height but also keep trans-campus hikes from murdering your feet. That way I will not only be rich, I will have more comfortable strolls to the greenhouses — and stay tall whilst doing so.

abode

Ahh, it’s been another bit of a while since I last posted, hasn’t it? Well, let’s just attribute that to the fact that I’m working again. It certainly isn’t laziness. Yeah.

February is turning into quite a month. Not only is there a new job in the family, there is the potential for a new house in the near future as well. That’s right, folks, this past month or so Steven and I have formally dived into the chaotic and barmy world that is the house-buying experience. It has been quite the education trip.

Here one would probably drone on about all the people they’ve met, houses they’ve seen, and policies that have confused them, but our encounters have been pretty straight-forward — why bore you? I’ll get to the good stuff.

We’ve found our favourite house — now we just have to get it. Of course we have picked out the newly finished, last house to be built in this specific neighborhood. Because of that, we went ahead and submitted a bid on the house last Saturday; it’s ready to be sold and if we don’t jump at it now, somebody else will. We haven’t heard back yet, but our fingers are still crossed.

If we don’t get this specific house, it won’t be the end of the world. There are a lot of houses being built in Auburn right now . . . but I do so like the house we’ve found. Maybe we’ll get good news this week.

Maybe I’ll finally have a yard soon.

back to college

Hmm, yeah, so I haven’t written in a while. Sorry about that. I’ve been staring at my phone for the past two weeks, willing it to ring.

On Tuesday, it finally did.

Now, I am proud to announce that after six months of suspecting, a month of preparing, thirty minutes of interviewing, an intense moment of confusion, and two weeks of phone-staring, I am now, officially, employed again — this time as an academic advisor for Auburn University. Back to college I go, I go.

I am quite looking forward to this job. It certainly will be different from what I did previously. This time there will be less drawing and more talking which, surprisingly, I am looking forward to. I’m sure being isolated in the apartment for seven months has contributed to that, but I do remember enjoying the bits of my last job where I got to meet up with different people and discuss ideas. This new job will be just more of that, it will be . . . business. Ahh, and here I am reminded of Sam, the blue eagle muppett in The Muppett Christmas Carol. “Oh, you’ll love . . . business. It is the American Way.” Excellent quote, but I am wandering off the subject at hand.

So, yes. Job. Horray for everything!

You know what I think the best part is? It’s a silly thing, really, but just the same I am getting joy out of it. I shall have a lovely yellow A-zone tag to hang on my Elliott. This one bit of reflective plastic makes me cool in my contemporaries’ eyes. On campus, I can park anywhere and drive wherever I please . . . as long as it’s not a handicapped spot. Still gotta leave room for them, you know.

Come Monday morn I will be headed back to the Land of the Working in Funchess Fungus Hall, where I will no doubt fill out a lot of paperwork. But after that — business!

hey, is that a cat hanging from your forehead or are you just happy to see me?

I’ve written before about Renton’s recent habit of sleeping on my pillow at night. I guess it’s not so recent now; he’s been doing it for quite a few months. There’s never been a problem with it. If he takes up too much room I just head-butt him a bit. Problem solved.

Unfortunately, Renton never sleeps all curled up like a normal cat. He’ll roll over on his back or stretch out his legs at funny angles. He tosses and turns a lot at night as well. Add all this in with the fact that he is the clumsiest cat I have ever seen and you end up with the incident we had last Saturday night.

Sometime in the middle of that night I woke up to a searing pain on my forehead. My first waking memory is of me prying Renton’s paw, claws extended, off of my forehead. As I am doing this I realize that this paw is the only thing keeping him from falling over the bed — the rest of his body was dangling precariously off the edge. He must have rolled over too far in his sleep.

Now keep in mind this is no ordinary-sized cat. This is a big-butt, twelve pound applehead Siamese that eats too much and runs too little. And he was hanging off of my head.

Once I got him pried off he fell unceremoniously to the floor and I began gasping and sobbing uncontrollably. Hey, let’s face it: it hurt like a bitch and scared the shit out of me. It also didn’t help that I was half-asleep. By that time there was a very dazed Steven holding on to me, calming me down while trying to figure out what was wrong. Soon after, he threw the cats out of the room.

Thankfully I’ve no horrid scars; they are in my hairline anyway. And even though I was nervous, I let Renton back on my pillow again the next night. Not that I felt sorry for him, you understand, but because if you shut the door on him he will shake it back and forth with his paw.

All. Night. Long.

I guess we would rather have sleep with the possibility of a maiming than no sleep at all.

Dear Sir:

Sometimes I think we, as humans, tend to look back at the past through rose-colored glasses. We don’t see the wars and the crimes and the uncertainty. All we see is nostalgia. All we remember are the good times when we were safe and how our nation prevailed over Evil. We beat our chests and think, “Oh, if only the men today could be like that. They were men of honor. Why can’t today be like then?”

Then every once in a while someone gets the idea: maybe we can. Get rid of the bad stuff of today’s times and we will have honor again. Get rid of the cursing on television, the pornography, the homosexual lifestyle that many flaunt now, all those gangs on the streets. Rout them all out and it will be like before. “I’m not a bigot, I’m a man of honor,” they think. “It’s for the children; the future generations. I owe it to them.”

But I cannot seem to wrap my mind around this. Don’t they see that all that bad stuff was there back then; it has always been there right along with the good? Even in individual people the good could reside right along with the bad. We had brave, selfless men in the military — but many made sure to visit the foreign brothels. I had two sweet, caring grandfathers — but they could cuss with the best of them. We had a great governor — he just happened to fight for segregation.

I’m not saying that nobody is honorable; of course people are. But being so noble does not keep you from being dogmatist in other ways. In looking back at the past, we somehow shield our minds from seeing those past ideals that would be considered extremist now. We just see the honor and become despondent when we think now there is none left.

You can try, Mr. Sheriff, but you aren’t going to be able to turn our culture back fifty or sixty years. I seriously doubt we’re all headed to Hell in a handbasket. People have been voicing that opinion since the dawn of time, yet we’re still here happily forgetting about those past anxieties.

Yes, we lock our doors at night now. It’s a shame, but we do it now. Did you know many in Canada do not? Yet they have the same movies and television shows as us; eight of Canada’s regions even allow same-sex marriages. How can we pin the faults of our society on such issues as this? Why do you cast blame?

Times change. Ideals change. And looking back into yesteryear to pluck out those dated ideals just to thread them into today’s society will do nothing but piss some people off.

I read your letter, Mr. Sheriff. I laughed in disbelief. I debated with my peers. I yelled at the walls in frustration. Then I sat down to write. I’ve now said my piece.

I apparently slept through the 90s

The Christmas holidays are finally coming to a halt around here. Everyone is back in town and heading back to school and/or work. Glad to see my friends again.

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One of my childhood memories is of my parents playing Trivial Pursuit; sometimes with friends, other times by themselves. I imagine it in my mind to be the Original Edition — it was in a dark blue-green box and the board was quite elegant in it’s simplicity. Before I understood the game, I was always fascinated with the playing pieces and the pies that you got. It was very colorful, and I am usually attracted to colorful stuff. You know what they say about simple minds.

Later on, I got the gist of the game and enjoyed playing it myself. Steven and I got our own edition, the Millennium edition, a while back when I was still in college. It is an updated version with a shinier box and the board has pictures on it, but it’s the same game, more or less. It has been well-used.

Recently I spied the 90s Edition of Trivial Pursuit in the stores. I knew I would be superb at it. After all, that is my decade, the ten years I spent my teenage times and was becoming truly acquainted with the world. The news became fascinating — starting with the Gulf War — and my eyes drank it up off CNN’s channel. Movies became more than cartoons though I still could find time to read the comics. My reading material began to change from Beverly Cleary novels to bigger tomes. Fashion started to become important to my schoolmates, much to my horror. I know the 90s. It would be no sweat.

We got the opportunity to play the 90s edition game a few nights ago; Lisa got it for Christmas, lucky butt. My one gripe about the design were the player pieces — no longer simple pies but humongous plastic sculptures, each representing a bit of the decade. Ahh, but that is a trivial matter, really. I’m a purist when it comes to nostalgia. (The new My Little Ponies look like equine Barbie dolls, but that’s another story). Back to the game. All of us players had been teenagers in the 90s; I was ready for winning streaks of 14 right answers before something could trip any of us up. We were gonna rock, plastic pieces or no.

Apparently, I was asleep through the 90s and my mind tricked me into thinking I was actually paying attention. I could only answer the most basic of questions. I now realize I have no grasp of what was going on that decade and I wonder how I could have wasted ten years worrying about those silly things I know I fretted over.

When I was younger, I always wished I could hurry and grow up so I could see what was coming next, always waiting to see the bit of new that was approaching. Now I wish I could just go back in time a bit to catch up on my newspaper reading to see what I missed.

you poo-faced proctologist

Just letting y’all know that I’ve got some new pictures up at Crunchy Images. They’re mostly of our New Year’s festivities. We had a blast with big-butt sparklers and huge fireworks.

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After the fireworks were over and we moved into the year 2005, we all sat down with Mom and Dad while Cathy surfed the television for something to watch.

She saw the South Park movie was showing and flipped to that — I don’t know what possessed her. As soon as the channel changed we were met with Terrence (or Philip) in mid-sentence retorting, “. . . shit-faced cockmaster!”

Boy, were Mom and Dad surprised.

They actually did stay in the room and watch it for about five minutes. They probably will deny it now, but they were amused. I heard them laughing.

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And for a side note of humor, Blogger’s spell-check wanted to replace ‘cockmaster’ with ‘geochemistry.’ Nuts, I always get those two words mixed up!