Category: Life

Zoe is off to Utah today. Matt’s friend picked her up sometime this afternoon, so this is my first day in well over a year of coming home to no dog. It’s a bummer. I went to the backyard and found that Stinkfoot had killed a mother mouse and was in the process of taking out a baby, so I prevented that. I don’t need any more depression around here.

I’m really going to miss having Zoe. She was the best dog anyone could ask for – she was talented, intelligent, and did what she was told, most of the time.

No more frisbee. No more trips to Petsmart. No more walks through Hillcrest at sundown, like we did last night. I picked up some Chinese food and gave Zoe some choice pork bits as we sat in front of the post office.

On the bright side: no more fleas, no more cleaning dog hair off the rug and bath mat, no more worrying about her constant scratching, no more smelly house and car. And I can wake up on weekends whenever I want now.

It was about a 60/40 split on giving her up. I’ll probably start bawling later tonight or tomorrow as I start to realize how much of a part of me I’ve lost.

I have an unfortunate habit of not planning my weekends. And I really should learn that, particularly with a 3-day weekend, plans need to be made. Otherwise I run the risk of doing nothing and feeling bad because I wasted a great opportunity. I could have taken a road trip, I could have organized an outing of some kind. Here’s how lame my weekend was:

Saturday no one was around. I ran random errands, took Zoe to the park, and tried to find something fun to do. The weather was beautiful and the dog park was EMPTY. Kind of amazing, really. I also read a lot, played guitar a lot. That was it. Sunday I tried to get someone, anyone, interested in seeing the last baseball game at Ray Winder Field. No takers, although Kathy and some friends tried to make it but the game sold out just after their arrival. I made it in, but there were no seats, and the lines for beer and hot dogs were crazy long. I gave up and went home during the first inning. I had coffee at Sufficient Grounds with Jessica, and caught up with Frisco (my first LR roomate, recently returned to town from Tokyo). He came over laster with Kirsten from Sandalwood Forest and we watched the DJ Shadow and Cut Chemist “Brainfreeze” DVD.

But here’s the best part: Saturday I knew that nothing was really on the horizon, so I thought I could maybe run up to Harrison or something. The one thing that kept me from doing so was that Don Caballero were playing at Vino’s Sunday night. So I went, assuming that the show started at a normal time, like 8:30. But no. On Sundays, Vino’s closes at 9, so the show started at 6. I got to see all of 30 minutes of the band’s set.

Sigh.

Today I played guitar all morning. I went to Target, grabbed some lunch at Quizno’s, and finished reading the plays I’m doing in a few weeks at Hendrix.

The sad thing is that the weather was so nice this weekend that I just wish I could have done more with it. Must Plan Ahead.

In other news, Zoe will be leaving this week. Matt called. A friend of his is driving to Salt Lake City, and can give her a ride. I’m sure I’ll regret it later, but that dog is such a handful. She really does demand a lot of attention.

Oh, and to top it all off…Steve Irwin is dead.

Monday night and all Tuesday I took care of Madeline, Jennifer’s daughter, while Jenn is on the road. Madness, as I like to call her, is 8 and quite the handful. I got to do all the fun things parents do – get food, walk the neighborhood, play board games, get to bed, wake them up, drive to school, etc. I stayed at her house in Cabot and if I learned one thing, it’s that I could never fathom living in Cabot and driving to work in Little Rock every morning. It’s utter hell, and I only work in North Little Rock. The only thing worse is trying to drive back into Cabot at 5pm.

Seriously, though. Kids. I get along well with them because I’m still one of them, despite my height and mortgage. I wish I could say I look forward to having them, but really I don’t look forward to the first 5 years. Babies I have no use for. Give me a kid that is verbally coherent and fully mobile, and I’m good. If only there were some way to skip infancy….

You know how public bulletin boards are full of goods and services for sale and you can pull a tab of paper off the bottom with a name and number? Well I thought it might be terribly amusing to make a sign that simply displayed a name, and only a name. Maybe “Kevin.” And you could pull little tabs off that just say “Kevin.” I can’t remember what movie I saw that gave me this idea, but I though it would be a lot of fun just to make people wonder. Maybe it’s something similar to what Improv Everywhere does – little harmless amusing pranks basically.

So last night DeLaine and I made some signs. Most of them were just names – Kevin, Mike…and Chet, Max, Grover, Jane and Otis (yes a tribute to Kicking and Screaming). And one of them said “Free Refrigerator.” We posted that one at the Kroger in Hillcrest. We put some other ones up at Sufficient Grounds and Harvest Foods on Cantrell. Those were actually the only public bulletin boards we could find on a Saturday night. Wal-Mart doesn’t have one, the Krogers of the Heights and Chenal don’t have them, either. Apparenly Hillcrest is the only area with any sense of community. We may hit UALR or Pulaski Tech later on. We also thought a sign saying simply “Lost Dog” might be funny. We’ll see.

I was discussing typecasting recently with Melissa, the girl from the blind date I mentioned awhile back, and she was complaining that she always got cast as the ingenue when she really wanted to play meatier roles – she’s always Hero, never Beatrice. I said that I’ve been fortunate in my admittedly limited theatrical carer in that I generally get cast as the eccentric supporting character. At Hendrix I was noted for playing a cross-dressing former 60’s radical in Division Street, a reluctant hangman in Our Country’s Good, and even in the Playwright’s Theatre a few years back I was the criminal redneck ne’er-do-well.

And so Playwright’s Theatre is coming up again next month at Hendrix. I just got my scripts. They’re doing two plays this year, and here are the respective descriptions of my characters:

Sam Benson: Stan’s father, he’s eccentric, a free spirit like his wife.
Pittman: Age? Male, dirty. Homeless, a little off.

What do you think this says about the theatre department’s opinion of me?

Cook something in a Pyrex pan at 450 degrees. Remove your food, and place the Pyrex pan in the sink. Add water. Pyrex will promptly shatter of its own accord.

Someone needs to tell this to single men before they start cooking. Granted, I should have learned this sort of thing in Chemistry, but applied science in general needs to be emphasized more than it currently is.

I had to use my winter gloves to dig out the hundreds of burnt-fish-encrusted shards of glass from my sink.

UPDATE: Amy reported a similar experience from several years past, with pictures.

Finally a new plog after a long gap. Sorry. The good news, though, is that, as the photos can attest, the brush has been cleared at Dogpatch. I’m not sure for what eventual purpose, so we can only wait for news on that. Still vaguely exciting, though.

The photos may not look like much, but I mainly took pictures from the road while driving. The fact that you can see anything at all from the road is amazing.

My boss took me out to lunch today and gave me a nifty Kenneth Cole watch as a bonus for the last 6 months of taking over project management. If I forgot to mention it, I also got a raise a month or so ago. Apparently I rock. Nevertheless, upon receiving this lovely gift, the retarded gnome inside me blurted out “I haven’t worn a watch in I don’t know how long.”

Way to go, ass.

Despite what you may have been taught in kindergarten, sometimes honesty is NOT the best policy. Luckily before I made my faux pas, they mentioned that the receipt is in the box in case I want to exchange it. They also asked if there was anything else I needed from them (aside from more money, which they’re working on for everybody) to ensure a longer-term commitment to the company and all I could think to say was more vacation days. It’s true. I think I’d actually value that more than money at this point in my life.

In other news, tomorrow I’m going on a blind date set up by someone I actually haven’t met, but who is someone I’ve had many brief and clever exchanges, and who is a friend of several unconnected friends, so I’m assuming I’ll be relatively safe. We’ll see what happens.

Ladies and gentlemen, my grandmother Virginia Vorse Todd has been declared free of cancer! She’s 92 and she will NOT be trifled with!

When we first heard the diagnosis of a small inoperable cancer development in her upper lung, I thought this was how it was going to end for her. It was grossly unfair, considering how her lungs have always been clean, at least since the 1950’s when she quit smoking. But this will not be the end for her. She made it through the chemo with most of her hair intact, and she still lives on her own, albeit with help from mom. I’m so glad it won’t end the way I had assumed it would. Her warranty isn’t up yet. She’s still got a good 10 years/100,000 miles left in her.