fractured reality

It is pouring rain outside and right now I’m sipping coffee and procrastinating for my 10:00 meeting about Price Changes. Glargh.

I *must* remember to return that last library book.

This weekend I drove to a rabbit farm in Pennsylvania where we are buying meat from for the cats. The night before, it had snowed 4-6 inches, but you couldn’t tell by the Ohio highway conditions. Once I crossed into western PA, the plowing got a little less thorough and the final rural road I turned onto wasn’t really plowed, but scraped and packed down into ice. I pulled into the driveway of the farm and a dog (a Great Dane I think) the size of my car came lumbering up to me. It was followed by a bulldog the size and shape of a riding lawnmower. Both were VERY friendly and I rubbed their stupid heads in greeting.

They were followed by Tracy, the owner/operator of the farm, who was very nice, although slightly astounded that I would drive out from Akron. She showed me the work area (which can’t really be called a processing center, as there was exactly one grinder and one packer), the CO₂ room (for euthanisation of the animals) and the freezers before taking me out to see the pens.

The pens were handsome areas lining what I will call a longhouse, with a path between them. I wasn’t able to walk through the pens because the rabbits were littering (i.e. having babies) and were on High Alert (as we looked in, no fewer than five rabbits about halfway down the row were standing tall, ears poised). We walked to the next barn where there was a similar penned in area for guinea pigs (which were ridiculously and predictably cute) and also the indoor area for 50 head of GOATS. All of whom thought we were coming in to give them feed or treats or even attention, and very vocal about it. They were terrific.

Then we swung through the hen house (she keeps hens for eggs) and back to the freezers where our product was packed up. We talked a bit more and I bought some treats for Dook¹. Tracy also gave me a dozen of her eggs and a bag of ground turkey to try on the cats because she was in a generous mood. I packed my goodies into the cooler and we said our goodbyes, and I returned home, where the rest of the weekend was generally low key and relaxing.

+E

¹ Dook is Carmen and Rob’s dog. The treats were lamb ears and what was labelled as “pizzle”. When looking up “pizzle” one may find the term “bully stick”. Both are euphemisms for animal penis. Although “bully stick” might be one of the most descriptive penis euphemisms ever.

Random memories from when I was twelve years old. It would have been seventh grade, at West junior High School, which was a pile of rubble last I saw it. Maybe something has finally been built on its ruins.
I can remember Phys Ed, first with Michelli (aka Mooch). I recall the sensation of old fashioned hot radiator against my skin as the bullies in my period pushed me during the portion of running laps that took us through the old stair wells. Going up those stairs further lead to the auditorium, a fact that the band would exploit for entrances to concerts.

Speaking of band, I imagine that we had Mr. Miller for band functions this year, but I find it hard to remember. I played trombone in the band and in the jazz band. I remember that 7th grade meant Ohio history/civics with crazy Mr. Hall, and I remember him talking about his friend finding a fingertip in a can of beanie-weanies, his retelling of the scalping and death of Colonel Crawford, his take on cats and dogs being dumb pets with regard to weather. I remember that in civics I sat behind and to the right of Amanda H., on whom I had a terrible crush, and who I would draw over the shoulder portraits of in notebooks.

I believe we also had Mr. Roush (for the first time) for general science that year. Mr. Roush was infuriating for the quicker students, because he was always talking to and egging on the slow students. He also feigned being obtuse with them for upwards of fifteen minutes at a time.

Again, the art teacher was a heavy set woman whose name I cannot remember. I believe it started with an A – I believe it was Alder or Alderman. I don’t remember doing a single piece of Important work in her class. It might as well have been called “Crafts” instead of Art. Very formulaic. It was one of the years I illustrated the cover for the yearbook.

Our gifted student classes (I think they still clung to the term “HEIGHTS” even then) were held in the computer room in the junior high school itself, I believe. There we worked on first generation Macintoshes (built-in 3.5″ floppy drive) and programmed in Hypercard and read and discussed books that I do not remember now. I secretly think I was not reading them and bluffing my way through discussions of the themes.

Another difficult part to separate in my head is lunchtime. I don’t recall if 7th graders were allowed out to lunch; I get the feeling they weren’t. I know 9th graders were. I don’t recall when I learned to play euchre, but I played it a lot during lunches at West. The lunchroom was in the basement of the building, and I can still imagine the rectangular cardboard pizzas with little bits of what may have been pepperoni.

Math: Seventh grade could NOT have been geometry; I was a year ahead in math, but I don’t recall what came before geometry. I will say Pre-Calculus, but I have no recollection of my teacher.

Who else? I recall english being taught by a woman with black hair (Mrs. Jones). I remember listening to the song “Timothy” about three men trapped in a mine. I remember the teacher revealing that she was listening to the song wearing a leather jacket while motorcycling when she finally Heard the lyrics. It was probably the first time I really Thought about my educators outside of their working lives.

It’s Monday.

Strange, emotionally charged dreams that had me awake at 3. Bleargh.

This weekend was a pretty good one. Friday night we had fajitas and margaritas and general good will, Saturday we went over to the Raineys’ for games and pizza, Sunday, the Rents visited and we made a road trip to jeni’s after lunch.

Doop a doop. I think I left my bag at Chris’s Saturday. Not cool.

E

Friday: Spent the entire afternoon doing Year End stuff at work and yakking at Carmen about game theory and design. After work we met up with Chris and went to the Patch for some indian (which was simply delicious) and then home, and then back to the patch because someone forgot her purse. Then we had many delicious cosmos and unnecessary snacks and games of cards/dominoes while listening to LPs.

Saturday we woke up and putzed around online for a bit, had some lunch (I think i made eggs and cornbread and soysage) and then I went off to Square Records and snagged way too many chunks of vinyl, including, but not limited to, isaac hayes, the doors, the cars, stevie wonder, genesis, and creedence. After listening to a few of these while playing with becca, we had a taco snack and headed off to dinner, which was arranged by mindy for chris’s birthday. There were probably 14-15 people there. The reason we presnacked will be obvious once I mention the “restaurant” of “choice”.

Olive Garden.

Yes, that unholy affront to dining out; a slap in the face, a fat loogie in the eye of every hard working chef trying to even bring an iota of culinary zest to the Akron area; featuring the stucco archways of despair and the possibly drugged staff merrily bringing out shovelfulls of mealy pasta and tomato-flavored corn syrup. Mmm! My solution? A bottle of wine for dinner. Or half a bottle, anyhow. Becca had some. I poorly disguised my consumption by ordering salad for my entree. It ended up being a good time, if not a good meal. In fact, the most unpleasant aspect of the entire thing was actually getting into the place. There was no parking. I mean not a single space. Neighboring lots had prominent WE WILL TOW YOUR GODDAMN CAR signage. After a pass or two, we ended up parking three blocks away at the movie theater and walking. My heart quailed again at the sight of all the people milling around waiting for a table¹. It made my heart ache. I wanted to shout in their faces, “THERE MUST BE BETTER ITALIAN FOOD IN AKRON!” or “WHY NOT GO TO THE LOCKVIEW AND GET AN AMAZING SANDWICH AND A BEER?” or “MY GOD YOUR LIFE IS BEING STRIPPED FROM YOU BEFORE THEY EVEN GET TO INSULT YOU WITH THE FOOD!” But no, I calmly walked right through them to the area where Chris (and then, 20 minutes later, while I was still parking, Mindy) had texted me they were sitting.

At any rate, it was a fine time and then Becca and I walked back to the shopping center where our car was, grabbed some things at World Market, and scrammed.

Sunday, we had some terrific breakfast/lunch of spicy black beans, scrambled eggs and quesadillas, and after a quick(?) and spontaneous trip to purchase some NEW BEDDING (wooo!), I crafted some chili² for dinner. overall a very relaxing end to the weekend.

Onward!

+E

¹ The Olive Garden, you see, does not accept reservations. I do not know if this is to torment their prospective customers, their wait/host staff, or both, but the results are chaos. If you want to seat 15 people at 6:00, you need to show up at 4:30 and camp out, which is sorta what Mindy did in this case. When we arrived, after spending 15-20 minutes parking, there were dozens of people just waiting around hoping for a table.

² Although probably Alton Brown et al would not approve of my calling it chili, what with it containing beans and tomatoes and green/red peppers and NO MEAT.

So glad it’s Friday. It’s technically been a short week but with some of the meetings I’ve had, it’s really dragged on. Also the first couple days I was in a bad mood¹, and yesterday morning it was like a weight had lifted from my shoulders and I was generally the glowing center of the universe again, so yes.

Upsetting randomness: the Dangerdoom LP I bought (new in cellophane) seems to be warped. I may have to take it back to Square Records and see what they think. Upside: more LP browsing.

pervasive, ubiquitous, insidious

I am hoping this weekend is three or four flavors of awesome, starting with tonight when we go get indian food with Chris and hopefully follow up with some manner of frivolity.

Onward!
+E

¹ The flavor of mood where you’re internally debating the least imposing way of offing yourself.