a recent conversation

Kroger's employee: How're you doin' today ma'am?

me: Good, good.  How are you?

Kroger's employee: I'm good, thank you.  Have you got a buggy?

me:.... what? oh.  no.

Kroger's employee: No? Alright, well I'll pack these the best I can.

me: okay.

Yeah, its been a real dry spell with the entertaining conversations that offer insight on local culture.  He was asking if I had a cart.  I know, not funny at all.  I'll just make the next one up.

presently

Ego is charmed by the spectacle of a certain red dog dreaming, all snuffly and twitchy-footed.

Ego is also cheered by the lyricism of John Legend.

Ego is, however, generally disgruntled by the prospect of spending the entire night revising an article draft.  Bah.  Is it worth three months off every summer?  Probably.  But still, selfishness, shortsightedness, and an infinite well of misplaced outrage are the only way to be ideologically consistent.  Not sure where I'm going with that (anywhere I want, dammit).

The Sign!

The one out on Hwy 182 was gone before I could get around to taking a picture of it.  But Ellen found a photo of it on the web.  She rightly noted that the "Our children can't read" phrase does not begin with an "if," so the "We are all losers!" is an independent claim.  Laughing and crying at the same time always makes me want to crawl back into bed.

Unicycle Watch 2008: A Retrospective

Open with a montage of slow-motion, sun washed clips of boys wobbly, then mastering their unicycles, milk carton fights in the middle of the street, diligently practicing jumps and spins on their homemade obstacle course...  

(the shrieks of happy children and strains of something nostalgic in the background?  Maybe Louis Armstrong's "It's a Wonderful World"?)

I realized that I hadn't seen the unicycling brothers in a while.  I thought it might be the weather keeping them in.  Or the new season of Big Love.  But their prolonged absence makes me think the cause is more sinister or at least more mysterious.  Like the Mycenaeans, a bright spot in the history of civilization, then never to be heard from again, likely sacked by the Dorians.  Which would explain all the yelling I heard from that end of the cul-de-sac last week, come to think of it.

Well yesterday while walking the dog I noticed the older one in the front yard awkwardly talking to a gangly tween.  Oh.  How pedestrian.  Same timeless story of little boys outgrowing their toys.  Jackie Paper abandons his dragon once again.

Fade out from a still of unicycle lying in the front yard, rusting from its own tears.

Januaries everywhere are out to get me.

Surprisingly, the dog is really warming up to my roommate's new treadmill.

Did it snow in Mississippi today?

Why yes it did.

I was just discussing with my bro that I get a warm fuzzy feeling from the thought that any nearby racists that muttered to themselves during the campaign something along the lines of "...when hell freezes over" are both disappointed and really cold right now.

Turns out, in Mississippi-speak, that "coney" = "hotdog"

Additionally, "tots" = "tater tots" but I figured that one out on my own.

Who's excited for the Mississippi Barrel Racing Futurity at the Mississippi Horse Park this weekend?!

Mais, bien sur.  C'est moi!

Well cut off my arms and call me a ficus!*

It's raining!

Normally, after only two days of delicious, life-affirming sunshine, I wouldn't be so enthusiastic about a Mississippi downpour.  But, well, I'm quite pleased about this one because I correctly predicted its arrival.  Having spent nearly my entire life in California the dramatic changeability of weather here rattles me, like, deep down to my existential core.  I do not like that it can be nearly 70 degrees and muggy in the morning and threatening "snow showers" by dinner.  Anyway, I hopped out of bed this morning, took a look at the sky and decided I needed to get the yard work done early (a family of earthworms has taken up residence in my compost heap so its really humming along now), did that, then took the dog for a walk.  

We ran into a friend in the neighborhood and I pointed out that it was good that we were walking before the sky opened up.  She replied, " Really?  You think it's going to rain?" with all the diffidence fitting of a person that has spent a lifetime with curly, red hair (which she has).  I said I'd give it two hours, tops, with all the confidence of a person that won every schoolyard fight by resorting to biting (which I did).  2:52 pm it began to rain.  If I see her again soon I'm going to lord my meteorological skills over her.  Because, well, isn't that why people live in small, neighborly towns?  In order to be mildly resentful of everyone?

And speaking of clenched jaws, though more in an effort to not burst out laughing, I was walking back to my car after an evening in the Starkville town center when my very best student from last semester toddled up to me with his hiccuping friend, and, with arms open wide, shouted "Hey Alexandra!"  I said hey and asked about how he was doing and what his plans were for after he graduated this Spring and part way through a very rambling law school statement of purpose, right about when he also succumbed to hiccups, his eyes got very wide as I imagine he realized how sloshed he was, and, well, he mumbled some overly polite farewell and ran away.  There is something so charming about these Mississippi kids.  I find it amusing to watch them tie themselves up in knots trying to balance the proper southern manners they've been raised on with the familiarity they reserve for people their age (or that look their age, id est, me).  Ah, shucks.  Run along now, you cute little scamps.

*I'm trying to get this phrase to catch on.  I like that it's folksy in a covered-suburban-mall-and/or-Hampton-Inn kind of way.

I am right now planning for the first day of class tomorrow and am looking through some first-day-of-class notes from a few years ago.  I apparently asserted that science was "knowledge-making on the edge of the metaphysical abyss."

Yeah, I was all talk in those days.

And speaking of metaphysical abyss - you'd be surprised how often I'm able to use that as a segueway - there's no way John Adam's "Hallelujah Junction I" ever gets old.  I'm listening to it on repeat right now.  Pianos rarely transcend spacetime.  I should know.  I stood next to the people that moved my piano for me. 

I spent about twelve minutes today thinking it was Cinco de Mayo.

Weird.

The winner!

Let's hear it for Hartford Bradley International Airport!

Terminal A is now, officially, my very favorite airport.  Not that there are really any others in the running (I suppose Berlin Tegel is up there too but mostly because, while ugly, it is so brilliantly efficient; all function, no form).  I absolutely hate air travel.  It's such an exercise in frustration.  So to rank airports in order of how little I want to scream when standing in line at them doesn't really count as a list of favorites at all.  

The highlights of Hartford Bradley:

(First, full disclosure: our original directions to "Hartford airport" provided by Google maps actually misdirected us to the sorrowful little Hartford-Brainford regional airport in what I'm guessing is the industrial section of the greater Hartford metropolitan area.  There were all these old people dragging empty shopping carts in the middle of the busy street.  And our directions dead-ended on a road full of muddy slush that had maybe 30 crows milling about in it.  Really weird and creepy.  I'm saying all of this because my enthusiasm may be colored by the fact that I thought we'd never find our way back out of Brainford, that I'd resign myself to a smoky, sunless existence dragging a shopping cart around, collecting crows from the slush.)

1. A huge wall of glass looking out on the runway lined (the wall of glass, not the runway) with wooden rocking chairs!  It's like the porch of the future!

2. Largish bathroom stalls that don't require you to dangle your bags over the toilet as you try to close the stall door.

3. Security and boarding announcements only (no muzak, tv volume, or airport concessions advertisements) = moments of precious quiet.

4. Not Atlanta.

5. No trace of that guy seated next to me on the first leg of the flight that spent a good 45 minutes scratching his elbow - scabes?  do I have scabes now?

6. Reasonable TSA officials that: a) let my 11 oz. of lotion through with only a scolding and b) chanted "chug! chug! chug!" as I held up the security line trying to drink the entire contents of my Sigg bottle so they wouldn't confiscate it.  Hilarious.

7. To the kind-looking, Patagonia-granola New Englander sitting across from me in the waiting area reading Murakami:  I haven't seen your kind in so long.  I miss you like I miss sunshine.  Please be my facebook friend.

And... Happy New Year my darling friends!