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I don’t usually talk about my extras gig on Friday Night Lights all that much, I mean, I’m not even sure if I’m supposed to. But without revealing anything that would get me into trouble, let me just say that I made the easiest $50 of my life yesterday. At about 5:15pm, I logged into myspace to answer a message, and I saw a rush call notice for 28-32 year olds. I called, all the while throwing clothes in a bag. They booked me. I grabbed the bag and my makeup and got out the door by 5:23. The shoot was south of the airport. I put the makeup on while driving. I needed to be there by 6. I pulled up at 5:59. They gave me a shirt to change into, loaded me into a van, and took me to the location, along with another rush call guy. We did the scene for a little over an hour, got loaded back into the van, and got checked out. I was home by 7:45pm. A little over two hours, including travel, and in two weeks I’ll get a $50 check in the mail. That’s pretty sweet if you ask me.

Anyway, in other news, I did end up buying a laptop, and I was able to pay for it already. It’s pretty cool - I installed XP on it, because I tried Vista out and didn’t like, and it seems to run pretty fast. I haven’t had any major issues yet, other than a couple of stuck pixels, and I’m definitely not the type of person to stress about those. I hope that I can make this computer last 2.5-3 years. That’s the goal. I’m going to sell off what remains of my sucktastic desktop and then like, put the money towards going to europe. Or something.

well i don’t know, but i’ve been told
you never slow down, never grow old
-tom petty

Well, not much to say… having a party tonight, which will be fun I’m sure, and I’m having a really great weekend. Ben’s sleeping on my couch right now (slacker) so I’m getting ready to install XP on the laptop I bought a few weeks ago. The juiceboxes invited me over for breakfast this morning so I got pancakes just like my mom used to make me on special occasions. It was awesome. It is a very relaxing day… I love labor day.

I woke up with a sore throat yesterday. I still have it today, actually, and I think it’s related to the fact that my sinuses feel ok, but that’s neither here nor there.

But last night I got home and tried to figure out what I wanted for dinner. I opened the freezer and cupboards… and… sigh. Nothing seemed appetizing, and my throat didn’t seem to want me to eat at all. But as I was sorting through some old mail, and saw coupons for a pizza place mixed in. At that moment, I knew. There was no greater craving in the world at that very moment than my need for pizza.

The last time I tried pizza and lactaid, it went horribly wrong. Not in a lactose intolerance way… more like a dull stomach pain way… that lasted 18 hours. But I wanted that pizza so badly… after some deciding (I’m a decider!) I picked up the phone and called a nearby pizza place to get my ham-topped wonder.

It was so good. SOOO GOOOD. And for some reason, during the eating of my pizza and for a short time afterwards, my throat was way better. It was miraculous. It was… pizza-throat.

Alas, a permanent fix it twas not. Within a few hours my throat hurt again, and I started to smell the leftover cheese on my hands. For those of you who were unaware, the smell of dairy products occasionally disturbs me. So I hopped in the shower to wash off the cheese smell, and drank some tea. My brief foray into the world of cheese was over.

But for those few moments… everything was wonderful. Thank you ham pizza. Thank you.

So, as many of my dear readers know, I have a second job that has something to do with teenagers and the SAT. I’m actually pretty good at it, or at least, that’s why the survey responses say. I’m always amazed at how nice all the kids are… I was not that nice as a teenager. Then again, I grew up a poor rural yankee, and not a middle-class suburban Texan. I’m pretty sure that makes a difference.

Anyway, I was teaching a few weeks back when we were discussing essay prompts, and one of the sample topics was “competence”.  I just spelled freaking competence wrong… ugh, clearly I am not. Thank goodness for firefox spell check. Anyway, I asked the class for examples of competence.

I swear to you, the first thing one of the students said was “George W. Bush”. I froze. We’re supposed to try to avoid talking about politics, as a rule, but I literally had no idea how to take that seriously. No idea.

But, thankfully, within 20 seconds all my students started laughing hysterically. They were messing with me!! Thank God. I was having such a hard time not-laughing, and trying to take the suggestion seriously… Ugh. Anyway, crisis averted. I have some hope for the future generation, at least. And I was able to transition the class into a discussion about how to avoid offending the essay graders, which is always a topic that needs to be covered. I did have a student once use several expletives and *then* name Bush in a different class, so I keep it in mind that teenagers do not always possess self-control.

Oh, and by the way. I had to create a work category tag just for this post. I don’t like talking about work much, obviously. That story was just too hilarious to pass up, though. I wish I had video of it. And while I’m on the topic of work, I won like, a work award or something last week for my regular job. I’m not entirely sure why, because all I do is my job, but apparently that’s deserving of an award. I got a nice letter, and a gift card, and I believe I turned bright pink in front of about 30 coworkers. That’s all I’m going to say about it.

In totally other news, my computer sucks but I’ve patched it together for now. I need a new power supply, a new video card and at least another gig of RAM… which means I’m not fixing the stupid thing. I’m in the midst of saving up for a laptop instead. I think I may the only one of my friends that still primarily uses a desktop, as weird as that sounds. I sold some stuff at a garage sale this weekend, and I’ve got more stuff I’m going to sell online. I’m ditching all my hobbies. Who needs ‘em?

Mrs J, while trying to take over Asia in Risk: “I like setting really high goals for myself and then making myself miserable trying to accomplish them.” Anyone who knows Mrs. J knows exactly how funny and appropriate that quote is.

I’m actually not playing Risk. I’m on Mrs. J’s laptop, sitting in the J’s comfy living room chair ostensibly reading a business textbook in preparation for a class. I’m not really accomplishing that though. I had a long (but good!) day, and didn’t feel like I had enough brain power left to play Risk (but as G pointed out, I do feel like I have enough brainpower for the textbook. Yeah. Logical, I know.)

I haven’t posted in a couple of weeks. The prayer worked; Or, at least, I’ve been feeling better about myself. It’ll probably be a lifelong battle, like all internal battles tend to be, but I feel as though I turned a corner a bit. People tell me I’m too hard on myself, and that’s probably true. Sometimes it just doesn’t feel like it’s true.

Anyway, I’m not really here to talk about that. I’m here to talk about Risk. Risk, and risk. Risk is a fun game I’m not playing. I’m not playing because I have a book to read, and I’m not playing because I’m tired, and I’m also not playing because I’m hoping to get a phone call from a guy I’ve been waiting over four years to meet. It’s a risk to meet someone you know too much about but can’t be sure if you really know them, but I think eventually you realize you just need to find out. I may never meet him, either, and that’s ok. Interpersonal relationships don’t always happen within the boundaries and expectations you want them to.

The textbook is part of a risk as well. I signed up for a class, not a business class, but another class that had a “business knowledge” prerequisite. I’m taking it to find out if that subject is one I’d be interested, and if it is, I may just go back to school. This would be a huge risk. A $40,000 student loan level of risk. But as much as I like the people I work for, and with, I also know that I can’t stay there forever. I can’t stagnate. And if I’m going to move forward, I should be the one that chooses the direction. So I’m going to find out. It’s a decision that I will make over the next few years, so at least there’s no rush.

Despite my bluster and impulsiveness in insignificant matters, I’m really pretty hesitant to take big risks. I don’t know what’s gotten into me lately, but I’m kinda glad for it.

And in conclusion, some more quotes from Risk, as overheard by me:

Amy - Columbia is well armed!

Mrs. J - I can say Irsknirsk.

Mrs. J - F—ing Siam. It should be nice to me. I like the King and I.

G - You want to attack the lonely man.

Mr. J - Mrs. J isn’t being overly aggressive.
Me - Has she ever been overly aggressive? Was there a bout of aggressiveness that I have somehow missed?
Mrs. J - I will let Mr. J answer that question.

… than to be nauseous, and then have a mini panic attack in church.

It was a sermon about insecurities, and 2008 has not been good to mine.

I believe everything people say about me… the opinion of many vs. the opinion of one. No matter how strong I seem on the outside, those things get to me. Not at first. But it’s death by paper cuts.

In church, we were supposed to write down our insecurities and throw them out. I got through writing them, but panicked while trying to read them back to myself. I still have the card. The list starts with ‘white trash’ and ends with ‘nothing to offer’ and gets a whole lot worse in the middle. I wrote them chronologically. And it’s not even complete.

I don’t have time to reflect on it now because I have responsibilities to attend to. But I have a feeling I will be having a long talk with God tonight. With any luck I’ll find my lighter, and then burn the card to pieces.

I would appreciate prayers from any of the praying folk that read this.

I told Mrs. J that I would blog briefly about our church’s grillin’ out/pool party. Or rather, that I would blog that, yes, I did, in fact, eat a steak while I was in the pool. It wasn’t nearly as difficult as I thought it might be, actually. Everybody totally forgot to bring silverware, so I was going to have to eat it with my hands anyway. I was tempted to find out if the paper plate would float, but I resisted the urge. The steak was alright. The pool was fairly warm in a good way. I was given a pool-noodle so I wouldn’t drown. It was a fairly successful steak eating in a pool experience. I think if I ever win the lottery, I will try to eat steak in as many weird places as possible, much like extreme ironing.

Anyway, this post is tagged music because I’ve been burning all my CDs to mp3. I had this weird moral urge take over about six months ago, and among other things, I decided I wasn’t going to download music that I hadn’t paid for anymore. I had lost a great chunk my music in the great hard drive crash of ‘07 anyway, so it was probably time for a fresh start.

I started off with a batch of CDs that were just lying around, and then I moved on to the alphabetical binder I keep. I’m up to the letter “D”. In this case, D is not for Donut (Sorry Mr. Hedberg). D is for dada, a band that I used to love and have totally ignored for the past few years. They’re most famous for an early 90s college station single called “Dizz Knee Land”. But my personal fav of their songs is called “Here Today, Gone Tomorrow.” It’s a fairly hedonistic song, but much like another favorite D band of mine, the dandy warhols, it’s sort of difficult to say how seriously they’re actually taking themselves. My guess is, not very.

Here’s the full verse the title of this post is taken from. It’s always struck me as a very 1960s tale, which I think it’s supposed to be.

Twenty-two miles out of Pasadena
I picked up a hiker named Tina
Now we only been here a couple of weeks
Soakin’ up the sun, the drugs and the freaks
We hit it off so we, we moved in together
Got a cat named Ringo and it purred like leather
We robbed a bank in Santa Monica
I bought a Caddy and a gold harmonica
We’d ride by day, we’d play by night
We’re makin’ love every night

Here today, gone tomorrow, here today, gone tomorrow

Anyway, I really need to find a widget to install for this thing that will let me post what song I’m listening to like my old myspace blog did. Anybody have any ideas? I tried to do a search, but I’m just not a blog widget expert.

ABC’s.

A - Attached or single: Single. Le sigh. I’m really awesome at totally screwing up relationships.
B - Best Friend: I can’t tell you who my best friends are, but I can tell you who they aren’t… and you’re not on the list, Scott Stapp!
C - Cake or Pie: There’s a $9 chocolate pie at the Wegman’s in Binghamton NY that I could eat every day. But otherwise, cake.
D - Day of the Week: Saturday, probably. Sometimes Friday night.
E - Essential Item: Um… the internet? Is that an item?
F - Favorite Color: Green… no, purple… no, blue… wait, orange? Greurpleluerange?
G - Gummy Bears or Worms: Worms. They’re bigger, and therefore, a better value.
H - Hometown: Land of Oz, NY
I - Indulgences: Candy, music, thrift store shopping, microwave popcorn. In that order.
J - January or July?: Uh…. October. I defy you, alphabet!
K - Kids: I have a no-more-kids-than-arms rule, but I would like up to two, at some point, someday. Unless I lose an arm or grow a third one.
L - Life is incomplete without: friends. jesus. rockin’ out.
M - Marriage Date: I’ll go get into my TARDIS, find out, and get back to you on that.
N - Number of Siblings: 6- 1 “full” sister, 3 step-sisters, a half brother and half sister.
O - Oranges or Apples: I come from the land of empire apples.
P - Phobias or Fears: spiderwebs and needles
T - Tag Three: Uh… Evans. Jose. And Ben. I’m pretty sure two of the three don’t even read this blog, so I am totally breakin’ the chain.
U - Unknown fact about me: Some people say I’m secretly nice. I will neither confirm nor deny that statement.
V - Vegetarian or Oppressor of Animal: And they deserve oppression. They’re just too delicious.
W - Worst Habit: Is my driving “style” considered a habit?
X - Rays or Ultrasounds: MRI! Because then you get a picture of your brain!!
Y - Your favorite food: anything that belongs at breakfast.
Z - Zodiac Sign: Virgo, and who cares?

What I want to know is… who in the tagged chain got rid of questions Q, R, and S?? Those are important letters, man. Don’t be hatin’.

Oh, and while I’m on the topic of not hatin’, somebody joked around last night at bible-study-fun-night that someone should get a “Jesus is not a hater” tattoo (Jesus is not a hater being the name of our group). I’d totally do it, if I wasn’t terrified that the term “hater” would be linguistically unrecognizable, or, even worse, have evolved into some other slang meaning by the time I’m old. These are the kinds of things I think about. Seriously.

I want to preface this post with the following point: All through high school and college, my walls were always covered with a mish-mash of band posters, art work, postcards, and clippings… from… wherever. Moving around, though, put a damper on that type of lifestyle, and I realized that most of that stuff wasn’t relevant to my current life anyhow. So in recent times I have always either let roommates decorate, or when living alone, stuck to having bare walls.

So. The post. There is nothing that disturbs me more (ok, maybe less than the health care system) than the modern notion of a decorated living space. This is not because I think everyone should live in houses with bare white walls and no lamps or clocks. Rather, our culture has become consumed by the idea that every space needs to look a certain way, or in a certain spectrum of ways, in order to “be presentable”. It’s like HGTV has taken over all our brains and sucked them of any idea of what we actually want.

I know Mrs. J has similar problems, though probably for different reasons. But I do know that she also does not appreciate the pressure to have a well-decorated house.

I’m aware that I’m not explaining myself well. But personally, I have a difficult time thinking that I should go buy decorative things. Those things, in stores, do not add value to my life in any way, and would not help express the person that I am to someone who has just walked into my apartment. I find those things to be a waste of my time and money. I know that there are a lot of people who feel differently. Some people feel they are able to express something, maybe even something artistic, with the things they have gone out and bought. I’m really not one of those people. Even my recently purchased purple corduroy couch is more significant to me because of the corduroy (reminds me of my childhood) and the functionality (doubles as a sleeper) than because of it’s color or style. It could have been green or blue or orange, and it would have been pretty much the same. The only thing about the color is that it happens to be a color I like, and it’s not something neutral or overly muted. I’m not really into muted, but that’s fairly obvious to anyone who knows me. But I really do object to the “rooms-to-go” style of decorating, where some interior decorator tells the consumer what looks good, and the consumer goes out and buys all of it, even though it may not be any real expression of who that consumer is.

“Ok,” you’re saying, “What does this have to do with anything?” Well, two more quick points. One is that I did bring home quite a bit of artwork of mine from my mom’s house yesterday. Another is that I signed a lease for my apartment for another full year, which kicked in on Tuesday. The gears started to turn, and I began to think maybe I should work to turning my living space into something that does represent me a little bit more than blank white walls. So today, I did.

Before:

After:

I’ll be honest - I did buy the fabric panels around the windows a few months back, in the hopes of experimenting with them at some point. I got them for $4 at a garage sale. Obviously, I can’t paint anything in my apartment, so I had a thought about fabric panels to add color to my walls. I don’t even remember why I was thinking I wanted that, but I got them, and today I finally used them. The artwork on the walls is all mine, done during high school and college. There’s still some work to be done… I’d eventually like to get some photos matted to put up, and I need to paint the edges of two of the paintings (uh, whoops.) But overall, I think the room is a lot less generic and a lot more me. I think I feel more at home.

So, what do you think?

Oh, and something I forgot to mention yesterday in my post about things I did this week… Tim would be proud. I took care of my car… took it in to get the transmission fluid changed, cleaned it inside and out, and recharged the A/C. It’s like a totally different car. Ok, maybe not, but it’s a more comfortable same ol’ car.

The title of this entry is mostly meaningless, except that I did, in fact, go to Louisiana this week, and I did hear those lyrics while I was driving back. The song is True Dreams of Wichita, by Soul Coughing, if anyone cares.

I’m going to tell this story, the story of the trip, from end to back to front, instead of front to back. You would think the drive back was boring. You’d be wrong. First of all, the cops were out in force. And I mean it. Locals, troopers, both LA and TX. Made it a challenging drive for me, what with my low flyer ways and all. I also got a couple of great phone calls… one of my friends is throwing a rock band party (which I will be leaving for as soon as this post is done) and another from my other job telling me they’ve got work for me (woo!) which is fantastic because I was worried this summer was going to be a little too boring. But that’ll fill up some time and put some $ in my pocket.

But the piece-de-resistance of the day was a short stop in Tatum TX. Fair blog readers, you may remember the sad day when I had to abandon my 1994 Geo Prizm on the side of the road almost exactly a year ago. Unfortunately, I did not have the foresight to remove everything from the car that day that I wanted. But today I remedied this - By stopping at the junkyard where my car now rests in peace. I got my stuff, and said my last goodbyes to the prizm.

Wondering what I got? Let me show you!

Clockwise from upper left: Socket set, charger to… something, my old Virginia license plates, the floor mats Evans gave me, Frank the Brick (an in-joke and sentimental thing only Ben gets), jumper cables my mom gave me, a sunglass case, bug spray from Evans’s birthday pinata a few years back, keys to… something, the UPC to my violin, a post it note that includes a band name I decided I liked on pandora, a geniune NY ice scraper, a stun gun that may or may not work, a map of the southeastern united states, and a small blanket I used to sit on.

Totally sweet.

So, the rest of the trip. Not too much happened… my mom had some very minor surgery, and I went out there to help out and hang out. I got a lot of reading done, and worked on Moe’s new cage. We also went to a peach festival, and I entered Moe in a pet show, which was hilarious, and I hope to have pictures of that someday. My stepsister is very, very pregnant, and I got to see her a bit. My mom and I went clearance rack shopping at the mall, and I got some shirts I like for cheap. I also did some boring paperwork-like stuff, and slept a lot. Oh, and the microwave stopped working, forcing us to rely on our actual cooking skills, and as it turns out my stepdad is the only person in the house who has those skillz. Oh well. I also listened to a large chunk of music on my ipod. Woo.

All in all, I’m glad I went, but I’m also glad to be back. I’m going to be heading back up in a few weeks anyway… my sister, neice, and nephew are flying down. Woo!