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  • “Experience is what allows us to repeat our mistakes, only with more finesse!” Random

    Posted on by The Thousand Yard Stare Comment

    Arrggh.

    I may have made a critical mistake and burned some financial documents that I needed for the estate. It’s not enough that emotionally I’m having to forge through this stuff, but then to have done something pretty stupid like that?

    *sigh*

    So, instead, I’m stalling again and updating my wordpress.

    I’ll tell a little story about how one time I was robbed at gunpoint. (This is not the funny story that I previously mentioned).

    This was probably 1995, when I was working at Kay Bee Toys at Westwood Mall in Houston…..when it was still a mall (barely).

    Finally, I had gotten around to getting Monica (not my friend Monica – she worked at the toy store with me) to go out on kind of a proper “date”. Monica (#2) is the daughter of my surrogate mother Chris who took care of me at the poolhalls from 1990 onward. Yes, I semi-dated the bartender’s daughter. Such a stud.

    Anyway – it was about 4:30pm or 5:00pm and if I recall (daylight), Monica had been grounded for something, and wasn’t supposed to be out. I picked her up in the Olds station wagon (such a cool dude was I). I don’t recall having a plan of where to go – either go eat or something, but I needed cash. It’s still daylight – so we stop at the ATM at Hillcroft and Beechnut. This ATM is no longer there, the bank turned into a wing joint. So, I think I got out $60 bucks – although it might have been $200. I don’t remember.
    So, I’m getting back into my car and doing the “lean” where you’re putting your wallet back into your pocket, and I’m looking at Monica. All of a sudden I feel something on the back of my head. I hear the words, “Give me everything”. I move very slowly and I’m looking at this black dude who’s got a gun digging into the back of my head. I freeze and just drop my keys in my lap. He calmly says, “Pick them up, and give them to me”. I give him my keys, my wallet and the cash I had pulled out. He calmly leaves along with two of his buddies that were keeping lookout.

    Kind of freaking out, and not being able to drive anywhere, we get out of the car. Slowly.

    There’s a white dude at the ATM pulling out cash – who had been doing that the entire time not even noticing that we were being robbed. I say, “We were robbed!” He looks a little surprised, but kind of shrugs his shoulders. I was a little irritated, but what the hell did I expect him to do?

    So we went to the Little Ceasers pizza at the end of the strip (Ty will know which one I’m talking about) and called the cops. The cops pick us up, take us up to my regular poolhall which is right up the street and drop us off. Monica gets picked up, and Brian picked me up. He was hungry, so we go right back to the same ATM (where my car is sitting) and he gets out cash. Man we were stupid.

    Chris was SUPER pissed. She still brings it up sometimes when I see her. I did kind of date Monica off and on from then, but it never really went anywhere.

    Monica (#1) might remember me having to get all the locks changed at the Toy Store since all my keys were stolen.

    The cops did come by the Toy Store and showed me some pictures, but the guy that actually held the gun to my head was not in the pictures.

    So that’s that story.

    After I tell the story, and people usually say something like, “Wow, that’s crazy”. I have to remind myself that I was EXTREMELY lucky that the guy was calm. If he had been a jittery crackhead, I probably would have been shot – dead. All these stories about “invincible” teenagers makes me think of that day.

    Just because it makes me feel better, Lucy always jumps into my lap when I’m on the computer:

    lucy


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  • “When you sell a man a book, you don’t sell him 12 ounces of paper and ink and glue – you sell him a whole new life.” Christopher Morley

    Posted on by The Thousand Yard Stare Comment

    I’m back from the store.

    Pet Peeve: People who EAT while at the grocery store. I don’t know why that bugs me, but there was a dude walking around chowing down on a corn dog. A CORN DOG. Mind you, this was the (dare I say it) nice Kroger that I usually go to. I don’t usually see rednecks eating corndogs and shopping for groceries.

    Why the hell is there no non-fat milk at the store on Friday nights??

    Is there a non-fat rush for the weekend? I got a quart of 1% and a quart of 2% (with OMEGA 3 added).

    Total shout out to my friend Monica. She knew I was down as I’ve had a lot happen recently and so she sent me the best gift of all – BOOKS. I don’t know how she did it, I haven’t talked to her in about 15 years or so, but she picked the perfect books for me.

    Here they are:

    villan_colbert

    I’ve been wanting to read the Stephen Colbert book. (I like the show, but I enjoy reading his kind of authoritative/commanding humor rather than watching it. Much like Saturday Night Live, I only seem to enjoy it when they start laughing at their own jokes on camera.) SO, Perfect Book #1. Totally my type of dry, deadpan humor.

    Perfect Book #2 is “How to be a Villain”. Totally my style, it’s a primer on how to be a villain (and I suppose take over the world). I can’t wait to start wearing a pencil-thin moustache. Hee-hee-hee. Whoops. Good thing that book teaches you how to laugh like a villain. “Hee-hee-hee” may not cut it.

    I honestly don’t know how she picked the perfect books. But she did. They did their job and they’re lifting my spirits so I thank her.

    There is probably one more thing I can write about today – but I may wait until tomorrow as it’s pretty funny. I’m drinking an excellent mocha (I have finally sussed the De Longhi out) and I’m going to go watch “Burn After Reading” and possibly “The Spirit”. I haven’t heard anything about The Spirit, but I’m looking foward to B.A.R. So the funny story may wait until tomorrow.


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  • “A speaker who does not strike oil in ten minutes should stop boring” Random

    Posted on by The Thousand Yard Stare Comment

    Ahh yes. The great American pasttime – changing one’s oil. I feel mighty manly when I do it.

    When you’re changing oil on a car that you’ve newly acquired – make sure you have a strap wrench. Using a pipe wrench impresses no one. Those guys at the dealership don’t want anyone taking the old filters off but themselves – the thing was practically welded on.

    1

    Success!!

    25

    That’s the stuff baby! (That’s A/C condensation – I didn’t spill any oil)

    2

    New filter, and easy release valve (for future self-oil changes).

    3

    Hell, I might as well do both.

    4

    Nothing more American than pulling your two gasoline burning cars out of the garage, unloading a bunch of used petroleum by-product, then reloading them with new petroleum by-product. I’m so proud.

    And…

    While I was changing/fighting the air filter on the 2004 – I glance over and saw a neighbor girl checking me out. Either she was busting me looking at her, or I was busting her looking at me.

    Of course, she might have been looking over because I was grumbling – and the whole neighborhood probably heard it. I should probably check “Missed Connections” on Craigslist tonight….

    ” I looked over and you were cursing Honda Engineers’ lineage – it was soooo cute. Tell me exactly what you said and we’ll meet up!! XOXOXO”

    Who freaking designed the oil dipstick on a 2004 Accord anyway??? They need to be shot! How hard can it be to make a straight dipstick? It’s got so many kinks (whoo-hoo!) that it’s a bitch to get back in. Maybe I just need practice…..

    Well. This is certainly going in a direction I didn’t expect.

    I think they tried to make the air filter cover as much like a rubik’s cube as possible as to prevent people from changing it themselves. I ran out of oil, so I need to run back over to AutoZone and get some. I think I’ve got another post in me for tonight…… I need more milk too, so I’ll try a little later.


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  • “Nothing in the universe can travel at the speed of light, they say, forgetful of the shadow’s speed.” Howard Nemerov

    Posted on by The Thousand Yard Stare 4 Comments

    Now that I’ve sufficiently napped, and had time to get something to eat more substantial than Kolaches and Vodka – several things I thought of that I remembered:

    * At the show, I was sitting dead ahead (or dead forward or right in front of…..you get the picture) of the mic – at the end table. Originally I was in the last chair before you hit the reserved section. This other guy is sitting across and two seats down from me (I’d draw a diagram but I’m feeling extREMELY lazy right now). There’s about 5 seats open, two or three to my left and two or three to his left. This girl comes up and she asks me, “Are you going to be using those chairs?”. Not one to pass up an extremely good setup, I say, “Only if I decide to lie down”. For some reason she finds this Hi-Freaking-Larious. So she says, “Oh you’re funny, maybe you should be onstage!” (!) Okay, now, I’m occasionally amusing, but that threw me a little – not to mention that it made me think her comedy standards may be far, FAR lower than my own. Which brings me to my next point – that girl…..

    * is the girl who snort/laughed throughout the entire show. Yes, she was at my table. It was mildly hard not laughing at her laugh, especially when she found something funny that only got a mild chuckle out of the rest of the table. We’d chuckle, she’d snort, we’d laugh (and everyone else around us) would laugh at her laughing. It was kind of like she was a laugh multiplier. She should probably hire herself out to struggling comedians. Joke bombs, mild chuckle from crowd, she snorts, crowd laughs. WIN! I think even the first comedian said something to the effect (after she snorted),”That’s going to be the best joke all night”.

    * The guy who I was originally sitting two seats down from, and after the snorting girls gang showed up, and I had moved in front of the guy, his two friends showed up. I’m going to give a disclaimer RIGHT NOW. I have absolutely NO PROBLEM with gay people. AT ALL. It’s a FREE FREAKING COUNTRY. Do what you want to who you want to. With that out of the way, these two friends of the guy across from me were gay. Not crazy gay, but one of the guys had his arm around the other guys shoulder all night. Okay, there’s the setup. Again – no problem with gay people. Gay is AOK.
    NOW, the situation that occurs when you’re sitting across from an obviously gay couple, at a comedy show, is that some comedian is going to whip out some gay jokes. Well…..that definitely happened. I don’t recall the comedienne’s name, but she started with her bit about her gay dad/uncles/relatives and the “dick broom” joke. All well and good. Well, kinda.
    See, even though homophobic comedy (which I don’t necessarily recall hers being specifically) is targeting a general audience, and is a generalization of a minority, blah, blah, blah, I tend to see things in terms of comedy. It’s a lot like the generalizations that black dudes have big dicks (myth) and all white people can’t dance (not a myth, just kidding, myth). It’s the “common ground” theory – which is why broad based comedy works well. SO, whereas I’m not taking offense at these jokes (primarily because I’m not gay), they would stiffen up a little bit.
    Now here’s the thing for me…..in order to not appear totally insensitive, I couldn’t really laugh loudly at the gay jokes – in fact our entire table was pretty quiet (except for the occasional snort) during “gay joke time”. That kind of sucked. Again, I have no problem with people’s lifestyles – and if something is funny, you should laugh. Perhaps I’ve said enough. (Lastly though, one of the gay dudes had a really thin black 80’s tie – I’m a sucker for a thin tie)

    * The dude who had the (gay) friends, ordered his food. I recall being a starving high school/college student….but he’s asking the poor server what drinks (soft drinks) and did the bacon and mushroom cost an extra dollar? (Yes – and then he declined). His gay friends got soft drinks too. I felt so bad for her I tipped her extra EXTRA well to make up for it. That’s the kind of guy I am. LOL. “Hey lady, you’re not going to get tipped by these douches, so I’ll tip for them.” HA!

    * Lastly, I do need to mention that Andrea is really cool – she’s as funny as you would think she would be from reading her writing (run-on-sentence? or just confusing). She got me in for free, and all her bits went over really well. (Except maybe throwing props for the Mavs. 😉 ) I don’t recall all of them at this moment, but I do remember really liking the camel cigarette bit.

    AND LASTLY FOR THIS POST:

    BECAUSE I KNOW IT’S KILLING YOU –

    Here’s what I got at The Container Store.

    I was originally looking for a battery organizer (my drawer full of crap is not doing it for me), but apparently I just couldn’t find it (probably an online only item). Somehow, the Container Store is very soothing to me….organization usually is. So I passed by that Pet Hair Lifter. I HAD to pick THAT up.

    My tremendous decision to get beautifully colored plum/maroon furniture was not properly thought through in regards to cat hair.

    containerstore

    The butter containers, I can’t explain. I don’t even know. I did need a sugar container though.

    >>>>NEWS FLASH<<<<

    That stupid cat hair thing works like a freaking charm! It’s AWESOME!!! And only 6 bucks!!!


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  • “I would guess it was spur of the moment.” Steve Ryan

    Posted on by The Thousand Yard Stare Comment

    Ahh….I’m so well rested. HA!

    I’m operating on about 6 espressos and four hours of sleep.

    Congratulations to Andrea for her advancement to the next round of FPIA.

    I made a road trip of it (last minute planning) and had a blast. It was well worth the drive.

    Racetrac (Collins/I-20): Fueling up for the haul.
    1

    Driving: I-20
    2

    Sanity:
    3

    Did I do this on purpose?
    4

    Brief foreshadowing on I-20
    5

    The essential building blocks of life: Water and Coffee (not ranked in importance)
    6

    TCC – after they drilled a gas rig into one of the fields….
    7

    Sheriff presence kept me from photographing the actual sign on I-20 splitting off onto I-35.
    8

    Rounding onto I-35S
    9

    Miller brewery down 35 – smells like bread/yeast
    10

    Huh. Blue skies ahead!
    12

    Tony the crippled tiger:
    13

    Heyyyy. What’s that up there?
    14

    Darn it. Thanks to the rain-x on my windshield, the drops looked like a swarm of sperm crawling up the glass. Creeepy.
    15

    Ha! Made it to Austin, so where’s the first place I go? Containerstore!!! They didn’t have what I was looking for *gasp* but I picked up some stuff anyway.
    16

    Here’s one of the Randall’s that I visited when I worked for the Deployment group at Safeway. I wandered in and used their bathroom. Also took a moment to phone my mother and find out about her ….uh…thing that’s happening.
    18

    Okay, so here’s where I stalled in taking a bunch of pictures. As much as I wanted to fully capture the experience on film, I didn’t want to be “that guy” who was taking pictures of everything in the world just so that I could post it to my silly little blog. Knowing that I was bumming a free ticket off Andrea before she was to go onstage, I didn’t want to stress her (or any of the other comics for that matter) out by taking pictures of everything that wasn’t nailed down. Sooo….I left the camera in the car. Note: I got EXACTLY the last parking space in the lot when I arrived.

    Watched the comics perform, Andrea rocked a great set and I watched a few more comics when it started closing in on 10:00pm. It was closing in on the tipping point for me. Either I was going to hang out, or head back home. I had already had err……quite a few vodkas…..so I knew I’d better get on the road to sober up. That’s right isn’t it? Caught up the the GirlonTop and chatted for a bit before taking off.

    I actually ended up leaving before she was announced as moving up to the next round – so I’ll be looking forward to hanging out longer when I find out what day the next round is. I’ll probably take some time off and get a room rather than drive back at night (again).

    So, back in the car, I did get some pictures, but as my last drink was a double (!) things get progressively shakier.

    Last Spot in the Lot:
    19

    I was there! Honest!
    20

    Drunk Dually Driving:
    21

    Pit Stop at the Czech Stop – ordered two Czech “Specials” and a Poppyseed Kolache. Mmm. Poppies!
    21a

    Last shot of the Miller sign (inbound). By this point it was probably 12:45am. I’d been awake since 5:30am the previous morning, and had driven about six hours total – so I was pretty wiped out. (And almost sober. WHOOPS!)
    22

    Since I got to Austin so much earlier than the show, I did get to drive down Guadalupe/Lamar and get more of a sense of what Austin is actually about. People always told me that I would fit in better there, I never believed them. I guess I hadn’t been to the right places.

    Looking forward to going back soon……


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  • “I wants to make your flesh creep.” Charles Dickens

    Posted on by The Thousand Yard Stare Comment

    Well, I’ve had several drafts brewing around here for a few days, but I’m going to push most of them aside…

    I thought the worst of my (last) week might have been when Girl On Top called me a creep.

    Granted, my post was well deserved of such a tongue-lashing. In my defense (of which I have no right whatsoever), I thought it was a funny at the time (in a ha-ha-just-kidding kind of way), but it wasn’t taken that way. Actually I kind of forgot about it, and ended up running across it again. Which is fine – I can accept that I’m still in a pretty dense mental fog, and that I sometimes forget that people “reading” me don’t always catch my immensely dry sarcasm. And that I’m kidding 90% of the time. If I put myself in the frame of mind when I wrote it, it makes sense, but a week later……not so much.

    Then I moved on and thought it might have been when the banker called and told me that the information for the account beneficiaries superseded the will – which wasn’t nearly as annoying as her not calling me for a month straight – including the time when I needed money to pay for dad’s 2008 tax return.

    Nope – that wasn’t it.

    It might have been Saturday, when my mother came in, and I volunteered to be her estate executor – unfortunately, I can’t disclose at this time what caused that to occur. Let’s just say it may be deja vu all over again.

    Then it might be today, when I just spent three hours attempting to rid my ex-mother-in-laws computer of the PAV scareware – which is an absolute bitch to get rid of even using my usual methods, then finally used windows restore to set it back before PAV was installed.

    That might be it.

    What a whipping of a week.

    eyeroll


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  • “Be a fish swimming against the current, and be a tree swaying against the breeze.” Random

    Posted on by The Thousand Yard Stare Comment

    AFREAKINGSONOFBITCHES!!!!!

    Okay.

    I got some of that out of my system.

    The banker who has been avoiding me for weeks now finally called me and told me that the beneficiary plan on the account supersedes my father’s will, which means that I have to distribute the estate, THEN pay for the estate taxes which means I have to recoup the estate fees from all the beneficiaries AFTER I’ve given everyone the money.

    Dammit.

    It wouldn’t have been so bad except that the banker freaking waited a month to tell me this. I’m glad I had stashed cash and was able to pay his 2008 taxes – which was no chump change at ALL.

    In other news, my neighbor across the street had a tree cut down. The pile of branches is massive, it was taller than my car – this is from across the street.

    treefront

    No HOA in this neighborhood. HA!HA!HA!


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