the 8-legged villian

this is what is now unaffectionately known as the "spider bowl."

all 8 of the little beast's eyes probably watched me make my peanut butter and jelly sandwich this morning as i was getting ready for work.

i could have lost a digit.

i could have gone into shock.

i could have missed out on TCBY.

arachnid groping

My goal as of late is to spend as little money as possible, seeing as I’m an unemployed massage therapist and a partially employed office bitch. Given my distaste for shopping, which is mostly due to the throngs of annoying consumers and not a lack of materialism, my economizing goals haven’t been too hard to realize. Downfalls are as follows:

- Sushi
- Grocery store extras (i NEED baked lays cheddar and sour cream chips)
- TCBY

It’s a short (and taste driven) list, so I guess I’m doing pretty well except sushi is an expensive indulgence and should probably be listed 3 times because of how much it leeches from my bank account. We’ve been trying to cut our wasabe laden habit in half, which works until we enable each other and wants suddenly turn into needs. This month I have an unexpected sushi fund care of my grandmother who probably wouldn’t touch the stuff with a ten foot pole. Funny how she’d rather suck on her lucky strike cancer sticks than experiment with seaweed and raw fish. To each their own, and to me, salmon avocado rolls please!

I should probably save a little of the grandma money for a therapy session. Backstory: There’s a ceramic bowl (made by Erin Root) on the top shelf of our bakers rack that used to house bananas, avocados and the like, but has since been replaced by a bowl from Portugal. Yesterday I happened to wonder whether there was any rotting matter in the ceramic bowl since you can’t really see what’s in there from ground level. I cautiously ducked my hand into the bowl, feeling around for the glass eggplant that I knew was in there, planning to use it as a starting point for my exploration. My pinky finger hit the familiar stickiness of a spider web and I yanked my arm away from the bowl. Not content to leave it alone, I pulled the bowl down from the shelf (being sure to keep a safe distance). I personally would call it a yelp. Others may loosely interpret it as a scream. Call it what you like, but there was a spider in the bowl that my hand had just occupied.

She said she knew about it and didn’t tell me because she didn’t want me to get mad that she had left it in the bowl (to eventually suck my blood).

I ask you, is this love?

jack be nimble

observe the great hunters in their natural habitat as they search for the infamous ceiling creature. the dedicated predators will lay in wait for hours, following every rustling scamper across the length of the domestic plain. neither food nor patches of sunlit floor can distract them from their quest.



(help... my brain is disintegrating)

damn the man

when i don't do my work in a timely manner, They bind my hands behind my back and make me spit shine these nitrogen tanks with my nose. it's actually pretty gratifying except for when my hair gets caught in the valve handles.

when They tire of making me shine the tanks, they make me hold a computer screen above my head and walk back and forth up this hallway that houses machinery and important gas lines for the research center. if it's a bad day, They make me chant "computers are good, excel is great, when i grow up, i want to be smarter than a grape." one day i'm hoping a monkey will come out of one of the little rooms to keep me company.

a cup a day

one of our wall hangings tried to commit suicide last night. it's hard to say whether it was assisted or not because all i heard was a huge clatter and scrambling feet. the kamikaze picture normally hangs in the hallway above eye level, which means there are two suspects: potential energy or an orange cat with unmatched vertical powers. my bet is on the latter. at least, in broad daylight i can say it was most likely the cat. in the middle of the night, my imagination (and too many episodes of CSI) said otherwise. i lay awake for awhile after the incident picturing hulkish lumbering intruders, too clumsy for their own good, wielding knives (or guns) and oversize elbows.

after a feline interrupted sleep, there's only one thing to do (besides refill the squirt bottle): eat the breakfast of champions. the mug was purchased at the inman park festival from a slightly inebriated older couple from florida. it was towards the end of the festival afternoon and closer to the bottom of their wine bottles. the cliff bar is "peanut toffee buzz"... i think they must have more than "green tea" in them because i can't seem to stop thinking about them from the moment i wake up until my teeth sink into the first bite.

i'm at home studying today, so you can expect more self-indulgent posts soon.

puddle diving

apparently a "20% chance of isolated showers" means a 100% reality of constant drizzle, thwarting my motorcycle plans, but not until i'd already stranded myself at octane. granted, there are worse places to be coffeebound, but now i'm having visions of crashing in a puddle on the way home. nothing to do but wait it out and hope the sun returns with a little drying action.

normally i'd resolve this waiting game with a hefty dose of the new harry potter book, but i've decided to forego the tradition of reading it straight through for something new: reading the entire book aloud while coffeeshopgirl does her homework. she says she can follow along despite my fears of being monotone. i think it might be true because i tested her by ad libbing something like this: "harry turned around to find ron and hermoine making out passionately." after a moment of genuine shock, coffeeshopgirl scoffed at my attempt. "that didn't even sound right." next time i'll have to make up something with a more accurate tone. "blimey" should do it.

soggy wallet

i'm sure i must have looked silly inflating motorcycle tires with a bike pump, but it worked! the last time i rode the moto there was a disconcerting wobble to the front wheel, which usually means low tire pressure. given my fear of driving to the gas station air pump, i decided to use the next best thing. it took some elbow grease, but the wobble is gone, and i was able to get in a good ride between the unpredictable georgia thunderstorms.

sadly, the bike pump won't be able to inflate my wallet to help pay for the two (!) parking tickets that were jammed into the handlebars. $50 down the city hall drain.

do you know how many times i could see the new harry potter movie with $50??

jesus toast

do you get to heaven faster if you die in a head on collision with a jesus car? i'd consult my local pastor or priest or whatever you call those people, but it's pretty obvious i don't have one. at any rate, coffeeshopgirl and i almost got seriously taken out by a minivan barreling around a blind corner in my brother's apartment complex. centered on the back windshield was a bumper sticker testifying that "Atlanta is Jesus." i didn't think good Christians broke the law. then again, maybe she saw us poking around in the parking lot (trying to find the mailboxes) and decided to do god's work to eradicate a couple of the mo's. this place is full of them, what's two less anyway? we could have been her fast track to the winged toaster They hand out after you reach 7 cold ones.

battle hymn of the squirrel

at approximately 11 pm last night, a naked coffeeshopgirl scrubbed the toilet while brushing her teeth. at approximately 11:07 pm last night, i threatened to attack her armpits with this little known torture device:










needless to say, we spent too much time indoors yesterday. BUT we did see a really great documentary called In the Realm of the Unreal about the outsider artist Henry Darger. I didn't really like the director's choice to animate the artwork, but the overall sketch of Darger's elusive life was pretty effective. I'd bet money (that i don't have) on the guy being hypergraphic.

yesterday was also spent drooling over the posters of Jay Ryan. his illustrations are hilarious and the colors make me want to rob a bank so i can purchase whatever prints are still available... i mean who wouldn't want to have this hanging in their office?

with a twist of lemon

i have to say something, but i'll keep it brief because i know there's going to be an explosion of blogging commentary far more insightful and thorough than i can muster. basically, harry potter and the order of the pheonix was well worth the wait and the inflated price of movie tickets, but i found myself repeatedly saying "that didn't happen in the book" (poor coffeeshopgirl had to witness the head shaking and muttering). i can understand the need to slim things down so I'm not upset about what wasn't included. what i am upset about is how many liberties were taken with the chronology and the blatant reworking of major events. there were decisions made that just didn't seem necessary to me, which is, of course, based on my extensive knowledge of film direction and all those years i spent in hollywood seamlessly reproducing literary work for the big screen.

i probably would have been more accepting of the inaccuracies had i not read the book about 3 weeks ago. in reality, i shouldn't be upset about them at all because movies aren't necessarily meant to be true to the book... but they (oh nameless harry potter filmsmiths) were doing so well.

i left the theater feeling bitter and hungry for more. maybe i'll squirrel away some grocery money to see it again so i can reprogram my brain to accept it for what it is: a cinematographic piece of eye candy with great pacing and a cast as deep as the 1927 New York Yankees' bench.

could Snape be more peevish? i love hating that guy.

hair of the dog

party #1: surprise half birthday, transformers mask, tapas galore, bring your own alcohol, design students climbing the walls.

party #2: miller lite keg, back deck, MOSQUITOS, bb gun target practice, so many tattoos and 3 hairstylists per attendee.

we went a little crazy this weekend and socialized 2 days in a row. the death shishkebob from my last post was the result of party number one, which was a well devised surprise scheme for someone whose birthday is in december. party number 2 was a staff appreciation bbq for those crazy octane kids. things got a little dicey when one of the party goers said "is that a gun?" enter green eyed lisp guy, who thought it would be fun to bring his bb gun to shoot cans on the clothesline in the backyard. at one point there was a frisbee game and target practice going simultaneously. only in georgia. and only with a tub full of PBR.

an important decision was made yesterday (sans PBR). instead of accepting a part-time job at a doggy day care (the first craigslist ad to respond with an interview), i'm going to fill my time (and hopefully my wallet) by finding massage clients. this seems like an infinitely wiser (and scarier) use of my time... get more client hours under my belt, practice marketing myself (with the help of coffeeshopgirl's design skills), give people a chance to get a discount, and start building a client base. the idea of hanging out with dogs for $8.50 is a lot easier on my ego, but it certainly won't make me more palatable or confident for massage clients. "um, excuse me but did you roll around with wet dogs before my appointment??"

now i just have to figure out how to keep the cats off the table...

on the rocks

i woke up this morning feeling like a death shishkebob on broil. who knew 5 beers would wreak so much havoc. i could lament over my receding ability to party, but really, i turn into a horrible human being when i kick back too many cold ones (or warms ones or floaters). the world is a better place without a drunk version of me wandering the streets. I once took a 2 am stroll from the mandarin hotel in DC across the 14th street bridge, into rosslyn (where i considered sleeping on a metro bench), down the whitehurst freeway (where i politely declined a ride from a passing car), and back through the city to the hotel (where i slept in the lobby for 2 hours because they wouldn't give me my room number). No phone, no watch, no money, no identification, with a hotel room key in my left hand, but no memory of the room number. My original plan was to walk home (via the GW parkway) but after further consideration, i realized i had no way of getting into my apartment because my keys were in the valet parking office. For those of you with no geographical concept of DC, my jaunt was roughly 10 miles...all in the comfort of Chucks.

as i was saying, no one really misses that version of me. well, one person might, but that's just because my antics always made her look like a better person. i finally realized that i can make the same tasteless jokes without hardening my liver and losing a day of my life to headaches and bloating misery.

and now for something completely different

mannequins make great friends

the highlight of our trip to Michael's in search of crafty bling: "they're so hard to dress because you have to take their arms off first!"

all i have to say is, I didn't say it.

new name for spare tires = side butt. sadly, i didn't say that either.

what i do have to say is that i am completely uninterested in studying. how can i care when there are discussions of quick-set jello and smart cars?

right now my brain is slow-set jello. or jello pudding with soymilk, which never completely sets and tastes funny.

mind the fangs

anyone who knows me can attest to my fear of spiders. i yelp. i drop things. the bigger the spider, the faster the immobilization (and the louder the yelp). there was a mammoth spider, even by normal standards, in the apartment the other week. HUGE. it could have palmed my head, and i'm sure it's slowly making its way home from the bushes out front to do so. which reminds me, we watched Arachnophobia the other night. could they have picked a better actor for john goodman's role? this movie is the reason i started sleeping with socks on, as if they're somehow impenetrable to the fangs of the blood thirsties that stalk me in my sleep. it's also the reason i check behind the toilet in especially grimy bathrooms. if only spiders looked more like this:

asian invasion

i've been having trouble sleeping lately. preoccupation with money and jobs has reigned supreme and is getting in the way of some much needed drooling. usually when i'm suffering from an overactive cranium, i try to concentrate on breathing or use a meditation that my acupuncturist recommended. it goes something like this: take slow, deep breaths and on each exhale, imagine that your body parts are turning white, starting with your feet and traveling up your frame. when your whole body is white, use each exhale (or inhale) to imagine yourself expanding into something airy and weightless. once you're somewhere in the neighborhood of the stay-puf marshmallow man, imagine yourself floating, becoming lighter and lighter with each exhale until eventually you're floating to the ceiling. (okay, so you're a cloud, but you can't just say "breath and pretend to be a cloud").

i've only made it to the ceiling once and that was in the middle of an acupuncture session... it's hard to say whether i fell asleep and dreamed the whole thing or if i made it into a meditative trance. i can usually manage a white body and some level of weightlessness, but lately i can't even get the right color. my feet are turning a dingy gray and before i know it, i'm not breathing and my mind has wandered off to monthly balances and passing tests.

general anxieties aside, there's been some great food consumed in the last few weeks. a mexican potluck with cilantro in almost every dish, a mother load of guacamole, and the best brownies i've ever had (care of coffeeshopgirl): chocolate with cayenne pepper and cinnamon, assembled weight watchers style with applesauce and extra chocolate shavings. those of you who came to dinner should know how much i like you because i was NOT interested in sharing those brownies.

last night's fare was the culmination of an afternoon farmers market trip and an overwhelming foray into the decatur asian market. i'm used to the sagging shelves of ethnic markets, but this place takes the cake (fish cakes that is). luckily there was a very helpful (and opinionated) thai woman to help us wade through the madness. the fish cakes she recommended were amazing... think spicy fruit loops with a hint of ginger and the shape and texture of meatballs. coffeeshopgirl also made japanese style sukiyaki. normally i'm only vaguely interested in asian stews, but ate my body weight in her concoction of tofu, asian cabbage, fish cakes, onion, and japanese cellophane noodles in a hoisin based broth.

after dinner we joined the usual suspects for a little 4th of july mirth. given the state of my bank account there was less mirth and more free water, but it was good to get out for awhile. although things got off to a rocky start because i took a wrong turn onto the prostitute side of Memorial Drive instead of the cemetery side.

tonight we're making asian tea rolls with fresh basil, cilantro, sprouts, carrot, and lots of peanut sauce. one word for you: MINE.