It was a cool night. I walked out into the garage. I hefted the bag of dirty diapers and put them inside the back of the fence. I threw the last of our scrap wood into the trash can, and left the lid off, awaiting the bag Julie was filling with cat excrement. I picked up the recycling and walked down to the curb, placing it next to the trash can. I looked up the drive way. There stood our trash can, awaiting Punky pooh. I looked back at the trash can at the curb. I opened the lid to confirm. It wasn’t out trash. I walked back up and brought Julie out. She looked at the trash can at the curb. Looked back to the trash can silhouetted at the edge of our garage. Illuminated like a modern day religious icon. She sat stunned. I sat stunned. After a bit of discussion, we noticed that our neighbors didn’t have their garbage can out. We pushed the can over to their side of the street, pushed down our cart, and closed the garage. Who knows if that was their garbage can, or if it is the rolling dutchman, moved from house to house, old trash looking for a home to reside in front of so that it can be picked up, stopping, but never for long. Rolling ever onward. Its owner forever searching amidst rows and rows of identical receptacles. Cursing that they did not right down their can’s serial number. Oh yes, your can has a serial number. Look and see.

There’s a grasshopper in the hallway, for a start.

Fly On The Windscreen

I can see this becoming a music blog.

I think this is what happens when one of the “Quiet Riots” Barack Obama refers to becomes not so quiet. I just don’t know how we fix our communities. Barack should really come up with a different name for this trend though. I don’t think anyone finds the term “Quiet Riot” frightening. Except perhaps parent’s concerned about their girlz rockin’ their boyz. I joke, but I really don’t have a clue. And I’m not hearing ideas from politicians on how to make this better.

On a more cheerful note, we should totally start trying to do this. Julie and I have been rocking two cloth bags recently. It’s pretty cool. Trying to get the baggers to not wrap everything in plastic and then put it in the cloth bags is still a bit of a trial, but I’m sure it’ll get better. I really don’t need my plastic encased meat wrapped in another layer of plastic. Thanks.

Speaking of cloth bags, I was bagging groceries last night, holding Stella. Normally when I start bagging groceries a bagger mysteriously just pops up out of nowhere. I have a feeling HEB has a policy that it’s bad news if a manager sees you just standing around while a customer is bagging. Anyway. I’m bagging one handed. Holding Stella. Which I was sure would cause not one, but perhaps seven baggers to pop out of the woodwork. Those seven dwarves would take my place so I could resume my busy schedule of asking Stella to locate her tummy or playing her tummy tuba, leg trombone, and arm trumpet. Except no one showed up. Which I suppose isn’t that much of a loss. Even one handed I can bag faster than most of their employees.

I’m way behind on my 30/60/90 project. I keep forgetting to charge my laptop.

This post is really random. Fantastic.

Stella and I went bathing suit shopping with Julie last night. Going clothing shopping has become one of my favorite things. Stella and I have so much fun while Julie tries stuff on. Last night Stella was checking herself out in the mirrored clothing stands. Wandering around the store. Pushing her stroller around. Checking out prices. Pushing her stroller from a chair. Trying to figure out why her stroller wouldn’t push anymore once she set the brakes. She was busy. She ended up pushing the stroller from the dressing rooms all the way over to the cashier line. Then out into the mall proper. We didn’t need to go to the mall proper, but that’s not a big deal. It was a lot of fun.

And a lady waiting for the dressing rooms said Stella was really smart for figuring out how the brakes on her stroller worked. I’m sure she is smart, but I think it’s mostly just “push the buttons” syndrome. Stella definitely got to push da’ buttons.

So I’ve been listening to this With Lasers. I suppose we didn’t really want it to sell on day 1. Haven’t heard from the tile place if they’re going to be able to install our tile before our open house.

What else is going on? Julie and I are doing lots of small stuff around the house. Last night I:

• Cleaned the oven. We sprayed it with horrific chemicals a few nights ago. Then I attempted to cook something in it, because I am forgetful. This released magical toxic fumes through the oven vent under the back left burner. Sometimes I feel like my oven resembles a steam engine. And one day it’s going to stand up on spindly white legs. Move forward from its niche revealing it’s long spindley be-gloved hands. It’s two front burners will flip up revealing his eyes and he will begin talking to me with his oven mouth. Inevitably I will say something rude and he will turn on his burner eyes and they will glow red, red, red! What was I talking about? Oh yes. Two hours after I sprayed the over last night I actually cleaned it. It is now nice and clean. And it only releases mildly toxic fumes when I turn it on.
• Replanted a hanging basket with new flowers. The old flowers had died. These were the special magical yellow flowers. Yellow flowers apparently make people want to buy. Or something. I hate throwing away plants that I haven’t given around six months to struggle back to life. But desperate times and all that.
• Played Lego Star Wars. For 10 minutes after I got Stella in bed, while Julie was getting Roxie from the groomers. Roxie looked even more ridiculous than normal. She had two pink ear bows, and a big pink bow attached to her harness. As always she looked naked and mortified.
• Vacuumed the downstairs. Vacuuming is boring. There’s no way around it. No story there.
• Ate McDonalds. The new geniuses they’ve hired are unable to complete an order correctly. I did not get my super-sized fries last night, and they decided this time Honey-Mustard was the same as Honey. Although that’s a step up. Last time I asked for Barbecue sauce and honey, and I got sweet and sour. I suppose she was keying off of the “and”. How sad is it that these teenagers cannot even properly perform a McDonalds job? A job that was designed to require next to no thinking.
• Put on a missing cable TV wall plate.
• But not in that order.

Could this post be my entry for The Holme’s Carnival of the Mundane? Probably not. I’m sure I can get more mundane than this.

Music costs money. You need to pay for it. Stop your stealing, and whining about how music is crap, and start paying the artists who create good music.

I’m sick of you.

Last night I bought LCD Soundsystem’s new album from iTunes. The Holmes’ had given me an iTunes gift certificate for my birthday. My computer doesn’t run iTunes, and it can’t play the standard iTunes file format, but recently Apple came out with DRM free music. Suddenly my computer can play tracks I download from iTunes (as long as they’ve been converted and are distributed by EMI). This was great. I downloaded the tracks, and I’ve been rockin’ out. Thanks Travis, Ashley and Henry!

But… a bunch of people are complaining because apple is putting your email address and account name in the tracks you download. So all you music thieves can’t just dump the new tracks you buy on some music sharing service. Their is so much complaining about this. It amazes me. I wanted DRM-free tracks because I run linux, and I don’t want to have to buy a certain type of computer just to be able to listen to music. I did not want DRM-free tracks so I could upload music to file sharing services.

At work, I have an iTunes share so that others in the office can listen to my music. I was browsing one of my coworkers shares and noticed that he had an album that I wasn’t aware of anyone else in the universe who liked (Brassy). Then I noticed he had all of the music that I own. He had ripped all of them music off of my iTunes share without asking. This pisses me off. I’ve spent thousands of dollars building up my music collection. I support those musicians that I like with my money. I’m making your music theft possible, and I’m pretty much single handedly keeping the music business alive. Stop stealing music jackasses!

This isn’t Pokemon. You’re not trying to catch all the mp3s. Grow up!

If you want to listen to an album before buying check out a Napster.com. If it’s not there, then chances are the band is too small and they’ll be promoting themselves with mp3s on their website. Stop stealing music, there’s no reason for it. You’re going to make it so that no one can earn a living creating music. And then the music will really suck.

Thank goodness for long weekends. We were on a mad scramble this past weekend to get the house ready for Realtors. We’re meeting with our first one tonight. Hopefully that will go well.

But this weekend… we spent Friday night having a Loaded Gun Theory meeting. Which culminated in Julie and I forcing Bill and Ian to move couches. With bullwhips. Four couches. We’re slave drivers. Slapdash Flimflammery is on though! Mark your calendars. July 28th.

On Saturday we spent the day working. Painting and cleaning, and cleaning and painting. We were exhausted by the evening, but we went to see Morrisey at the Backyard anyway. It was a great stuff. Although, I like his new album more than most people apparently. I Will See You in Far Off Places is one of my favorite of his new songs. Made me want to cry a little bit. I guess I get sentimental about the people I know around the world. Life Is a Pigsty was beautiful and really took advantage of his new band. It had been threatening to rain, but unfortunately the rain sound effect in the song had to do. I was really looking forward to getting drenched at a Morrissey concert, especially during Everyday Is Like Sunday (LP Version). Ah well… I suppose it really wouldn’t be a Morrissey concert unless you were disappointed. The drummer had a japanese drum for the thunder in “Life is a Pigsty”, which was then used to tremendous effect to mimick the guitar saws as drummed tattoos at the end of “How Soon is Now?”. Imagine that guitar rift vibrating your entire body. Very cool. The one song encore was You’re Gonna Need Someone On Your Side which rocked. Which was pretty much the theme of the night. The songs that rocked, really rocked. The band was fantastic and really knocked out the awesome guitar parts on songs like The Queen Is Dead. The slow songs on the other hand were often duds. There were even a few that neither Julie nor I had heard and probably would have been content to stay that way. We were exhausted by the end, but I’m glad we went.

On Sunday we headed off to church and said goodbye to our friends Mari and Todd who are moving to Mexico for two years. So more friends in far off places. We are planning on visiting them though. That should be an interesting vacation.

In the afternoon we got back to work. Again with the painting and the cleaning. Things were starting to feel like the house was getting worse and worse. I ended up cooking my parents a tri-tip roast with a minted chimmichurri sauce for dinner to thank them for all their help getting the house in order. We ended the night watching Nacho Libre. Which was mostly inoffensive. Although I wouldn’t have thought that the most enjoyable part of the movie would have been the wrestling.

On Monday we kept up with the cleaning. I mowed and touched up the front yard, added flowers, etc. It’s gorgeous out there right now. I noticed that another plant is blooming this morning. I think we have probably 20-30 distinct types of flowers in our front and back yard right now. It’s amazing. And our neighbors pulled up their grass on the part of the lawn we share and decorated with new flowerbeds, so our fantastic brand new grass is now bordered on two sides by native flowers and bushes. It is amazing. Julie no longer wants to leave.

Monday night we watched Blade Runner. We’d never seen it all the way through. We were impressed that it still held up even though every single piece of that movie has been collaged into 100 others.

Last night we took Stella to the park, since she hadn’t been in quite a while. She stubbornly refused to walk and mostly just mooned about. My mother called while we were getting ready for bed and asked if she could borrow our oven. Turned out she had picked up a pizza from Pappa Murphy’s completely forgetting that the gas at her house had not been turned on. We ended up sharing the pizza and then touching up a few last things.

So realtors this week, and Julie’s birthday party this weekend. Should be a fun 4 day week.

Fantastic quotes from this CNN article:

Schwartz called that “outrageous” and said even he can’t fill up his SUV at that price.

“If it keeps going like this, my kids will never be able to afford to drive,” said Schwartz, who has an 18-year-old son and 15-year-old daughter.

– Schwartz: owner of title insurance company and gas station.

Oh, the humanity!

I mean seriously. You report this “story”? The president is justifying his attacking Iraq in oh… 2001 with the fact that Al Qaida

How long must I itch. What in the heck kind of bug was it that has me itching a week after I was bit? I’ve never had anything even remotely like this. And it doesn’t seem to be going away. This is horrible.

So I’m thinking about doing this:

http://www.scriptfrenzy.org/

I challenge you to do so also. Let’s get some scripts! I mean we’ve got two film crews, one theater company. Let’s get some original material!