OK, so I went to Mexico and got a little drunk, but it is cool.

Veracruz is very nice. There are a number of pushy vendors but otherwise folks are legit and everybody is friendly. Tonight I had a couple margaritas and then I had to have another because, hehe, the table next to us bought them for us OMG. I went out with one of my classmates, who has been here awhile and already amassed a little fan club at the zocalo (main plaza). It is all so silly. Everybody is great. I went on my little walkabout con charlante about the city and it is very easy to navigate, I had my first class and it was all stuff I am already rad at, so all is well in the world of hard knock immersion. Oh woe, woe is me.:P

Basically things only suck when I sit still and consider that I miss my sweeties.

When I stick my head out over my balcony this is what I see.

The same gulf as yesterday, new view.

I always used to feel like a Gonzo, but I think I’ve matured into a Fozzy.

I have devised a simple three-step plan to capture Ian’s heart, should I happen to die and ladies wished to come a-courtin’:

• First, laugh at his jokes. If you think he’s funny he will like you. CHECK.

• Then, be real smart in a pragmatic yet intuitive fashion. This will impress him and he will respect you. CHECK!

• Lastly, be totally bonkers. Ian goes gaga over crazies and this will be the clincher that will inspire his love. CHECK. . .mate!?

I scale buildings! Hells yeah.

Today I saw a woman in hijab–and here I am meaning only her face and hands were showing–wearing RHINESTONE SUNGLASSES.

That is all.

For ’80s Night, oh yeah!

Now we look like superheroes! We have rad powers of Bowie and friendship.

I’m working on getting all the pictures up. So far I am 2/3 done!

The 7-11 down the street from our place is one of the eleven stores that have been converted into Kwik-E-Marts for the month of July (and the promotion of the Simpsons movie). We found out Monday night and understandably made a midnight run to see the hubbub, and because we’re extra bonus dorks I took a few pictures to chronicle The Event (even though they were sold out of all the uberdork-drool-inspiring merchandise like Krusty-Os and Buzz cola). Fun stuff!

There is no deeper meaning here.

I’ve signed up with one of those Community Supported Agriculture thingamajigs where I get a box of organic produce every other week. The ultimate goal is to be good to my body, the planet and organic farmers, and a bunch of similar hippie-esque ideals. But! I also hope that having a regular supply of random stuff will force me to make stuff I wouldn’t ordinarily. I like food a lot, so I’m going to post pictures here since I can’t go around the country making all my friends and family try my tasty treats like I really want to do. I imagine most will be kind of normal concoctions, some will be more fun, but all will be things I’ve never made before. Which is why something as simple as apple pie is here. I’ve never before happened to have a big pile of apples laying around just waiting to be made into pie. Now I have apples all the dang time (although I can tell from this week’s box that summer has finally arrived and with it a welcomed absence of apples)! Because I am crazy it is safe to assume everything will be from recipes I make up, at least that’s been the case so far.

Instead of pondering the universe in search of insights and meaningful joy, I’ve been working a lot, taking a kind-of-stupid class, and getting chemicals put on my head.

(More on the TaraTaraTara page)

Ian and I went and saw Fire On The Mountain last night and hot damn it was good! It wasn’t so much a musical as it was a narrated, in-character, ho-down concert. All the actors played their instruments on the stage, and there was some clogging, and a lot of soul-felt howling, and I teared up like four times (once before they even started–just the sight of these people in their costumes holding their banjos and dulcimers and limberjacks made me SO happy). It made me miss my grandpa and want to dance with him because he’s from that whole coal mining culture in the Appalachians. My great-grandpa was shot in one of the union picket lines! HARDCORE. I seriously wish there was a soundtrack to this because I’d pick it up in the time it takes for your heart to go “lubb!” (that’s right, not even a full heartbeat!!!). We knew a bunch of the songs, too, and felt quite proud. Yay for the theatre!

We went out into the Cascades and hid in a cabin for the weekend and it was really great. Really REALLY awesome and needed. However, in addition to all the goodness, the following anecdote also took place.

Late Saturday night we thought we’d hop in the hot tub before going to bed, but after getting in we realized the water wasn’t quite warm enough, and actually seemed to be getting colder, so we decided to go back inside. The fact that it was raining and seemed to be getting worse helped, too. Thus it was with visions of hot cocoa and a warm fireplace that we discovered we had locked ourselves out.

So there we were: wet, cold, in the rain at midnight in fucking Goldbar, and we had 2 robes, 2 towels, an umbrella, a locked car and a locked house. There was a neighbor down a ways on one side, but slogging through the mud while half-naked to wake up a potentially angry stranger in the middle of the night seemed like a good course to remain in the Last Resort category. Therefore we went around to the sliding back door and there was a nice heavy dowell placed so it wouldn’t open more than 1/4″ at the bottom and 2″ at the top. We went around to the kitchen window–another dowell (in addition to that squeeze-type of window lock). Both bedroom windows? DOWELLED. All the other windows were not of the openning variety, and we were beginning to consider which would be the cheapest to break. Fortunately, the dowell in the main bedroom window was placed at an angle rather than laying flat in the groove of the frame, so I went back to that one to mess around with it. To our delight the sliding panel itself popped right off and Ian boosted me up and in, I plopped onto the bed with muddy feet, and unlocked the damned front door.

HURRAY! We did it! We did it together!

It might disappoint Mr. Dane Cook to know that neither of us was willing to play the “Oooh, I don’t know, maaaaaaaan!” role in the B & E scenario. We both adopted the “LET’S FUCKING DO THIS” character and found it to be much more useful. Of course, we’ve both broken into our own homes and various relatives’ homes, but forcing entry into somebody else’s house, even if you’re renting it, is waaaaay scarier.

AND BADASS!

Heather has been staying with us for a couple weeks while in-between apartments. It’s been pretty low key, and really she hasn’t been around much, so the most exciting houseguest goings-on have been cat related, for she has two of them.

This is Marigold. She is a voracious lover, possibly autistic, and has either cat-pica or an oral fixation.

This is Toast. His hind quarters are fully grown but his front half is still all kitten. He likes looking at things and being a brat.

This is a video of Toast chasing his tail after taking a bath. I guess he didn’t recognize it in its totally-not-fluffy state? I don’t know, but this went on for entirely too long. It’s a gigantic file so be warned! (I’m trying to figure out how to make this smaller and maybe streamable? We’ll see. . .)

I am so tired of only living at night.

. . .

The homeless women I see every day have no place of their own, no time to their selves, and so it is not uncommon for some to become totally undone once they close the shower curtain and turn on the water. For them, the shower is a place of soul-bearing honesty and comfort in a world of harsh public vulnerability. A person who seemed lucid and strong a minute before can easily dissolve into raw emotion. I hear them talk to themselves, laugh, cackle, cry and sob, one woman howls rather heatedly, another moans in what sounds like pure agony. But regardless of their state prior to showering, and the weirdness projected during, their spirit is always noticeably higher afterwards. The dirt-and-sorrows-of-the-world analogy is quite obvious, but it really is wonderful to witness.

So usually I take a whole bucket of photos when I go on vacation or have guests, and this past month has seen plenty of both, but I just wasn’t into picture-taking this time. Therefore, I’m going to smoosh the few that I have from our family reunion excursion to Spokane, our annual Christmas voyage to Reno, and Kayla’s week and a half New Year’s stay with us here at the Seattle homestead onto one page. This one.

My dad was appointed Family Photographer by my aunt for the Spokane shindig and he’s posted the results: Anderson Clan Getogether and Whathaveyou.

It containts such gems as

and

was days and days ago, yeah, yeah I know. Photos are up of our Logan’s Run (the movie, not the book) -themed costumes, and the absence of our Box is awfully apparent, but the rest came out alright. I was Jessica 6, Ian was Old Man, Heather was a generic green character (although I maintain she was a clone of her present self, so Heather ####) and Tom was Logan. I wish there was a way I could dress up year-round without being categorized into the cosplay/role-playing scene, because gosh I love dressin’ up in costume and fancy dress parties are such a disappointing reason.

Maybe absolutely everyone else on the internet has already seen this, but if you haven’t, like I hadn’t, you must now because by gosh it’s interesting and fun.

A normal spider web spun by a sober spider:

The web of a stoned spider:

The web of a caffeinated spider:

BONUS SPIDER JOKE

So a spider scientist gets to meet the president.

He tells him of his profession and expresses his support of the war. They get along quite nicely, and the president refers him to some friends who are eager for his expertise and who he promises will pay him top dollah-dollah. As you can imagine, good-paying jobs in the spider researching industry are quite scarce and desirable, so the scientist says, ‘heck yes, sign me up!’ [paraphrased--Ed.]

When he arrives at his new job he’s greeted by an array of high-ranking military dudes, is led into a very serious looking room with maps and charts, etc., and is briefly debriefed. I say briefly to be polite, but the truth is that the scientist interrupted his boss WHILE he was getting the run-down! [scientists are so rude--Ed.] He appears to be experiencing an assortment of emotions including confusion, exasperation, and disappointment, and he exclaims, “Damn it, I’m an Arachnologist not an Iraqologist!!!”

I’ve been cleaning out closets lately, as I’m prone to doing, and have found a number of old cards and trinkets, as are likely to be found in dark places like closets. Inspired by this rummaging I’ve started a new section to house scanned drawings and things resembling drawings. It’s currently almost entirely stuff by my little sister, mostly from when she was 8 and 9 (and should therefore prove a tad embarrassing since she’s now well into her eye-rolling years), but I expect to add things as I can get my hands on them. Things like, oh, I don’t know, crayon creations of a confusing nature, epileptic pen scribblings, and so on.

If you have ever heard me or Ian say, “I divorce!” or
“. . .by the panda” (in an ominous tone) and then giggle, you will note that the origens of these phrases are two of Kayla’s 8-year-old-penned stories.

Hat to the back. . .gotta kick my pants down real loooow

What do you think a potato bug looks like?

Like this?

Or like this?

My personal belief was that the former is a roly poly and the latter a potato bug, but then I heard that some people think potato bugs are what I thought were roly polies. Actually we are all wrong. The first picture is a woodlouse and the second is a Jerusalem cricket (which are fucking disgusting creatures, by the way). Well, now you know.

Yup, that is where I’m going to spend my day tomorrow morning/today! I hope to have many churros, corn dogs, and greasy chow meins, regardless of the nay-saying I’ve received regarding that last desire! Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve been to a fair? FIVE YEARS. That is exactly how much time it takes to equal “too darn long.” I am so excited for the remedy that I cannot sleep!

Inspired by Heather’s comic creations of herself, me, and Ian, I searched for our corresponding flesh-and-blood spirit animals. Perhaps I have found some?

Now there’s a bear whose easy-goin’ style rivals Ian’s

If you watch Disney’s The Sword in the Stone you may notice, now that you’re an observant aa-dult, that every time Wart/Arthur falls, stumbles, bumps into something, gets scared, etc (which is all throughout the movie since he’s a total klutz) he always uses the same exclamation of surprise. It goes thusly:

“Whoa, what, WHOA!”

EVERY DAMN TIME!

I hope this newfound knowledge doesn’t distract you too much from your enjoyment of the movie, as it did for me upon re-watching it.

Hot damn do I love corn! We’re having a “corn feast” in the lobby at work right now and let me tell you: it is cornTASTIC! Also, apparently I am “base” for a game of tag some tenant’s kids are playing. Yes, it’s a tough job.

Try saying “as long as me ass has a hole” with a lower class Manchester accent.

It is really hard!

Actually that was yesterday.

More tantalizing photos are available here

Where did all the apples go?

I want to be a cowboy.

I’m afraid of becoming a desperado.

Also, the miscellany section has been busy.