givin' you highlights like Sun-In

It's summer, and things have been ghost-town quiet at work for the past few weeks, but do I take the time and use it wisely to do creative and mind-expanding things like writing blog posts? Nopity nope nope nope. I park my butt in front of internet TV and allow my brain to quietly bubble out of  my ears. June's almost over and I have almost nothing to show for it, post-wise, so here, in a blatant overcompensation, are the highlights from the past month.

--Things are going forward on the moving-to-Boston front. I've started getting lots of emails telling me that registration's coming up, and I need to schedule meetings with professors and advisers, and I've been trying to write everything down in my new you're-a-grownup-stop-writing-your-life-on-Post-Its daily planner. A carload of stuff has been packed up and trucked off home, thanks to Mom, so that's a bit less that'll have to fit in the moving van in August. We have an apartment, and therefore I'll have some place to move to, so that's good.

--My poor kitty has been coughing up a storm lately so we took her to the vet (a REALLY AWESOME new vet--of course we find one right before we move away) and it turns out that the poor sweet thing has asthma, and possibly pneumonia or some other unpleasant chest problem. So we're getting her medicine, and hopefully she will start feeling better soon.  

--Mom's visit to Philly was too short, but still fun. I took her to the big Central Library on the Parkway (which she'd never been to. For shame, mother! You grew up in Philly!), we bopped around Center City, we ate Vietnamese food, and generally had a neat-o time. And then she helped me lug boxes down the stairs and load them into her car. Thanks, Ma!

--A tornado hit West Philly the other day and tore Clark Park to pieces. No joke. It wasn't a twister, but tornado-force winds and golf-ball-sized hail hit my neighborhood for about twenty minutes and did a ton of damage. Enormous trees got completely uprooted, and some just snapped in half. There's still a big ol'tree lying across the path at the head of the park. Ridiculous. I'm just really glad that no trees fell on the apartment or anything!

--I got paid forty bucks (thanks, Craigslist!) to paint the inside of a little wooden box and inscribe it with some pithy sentiment for a guy who was then going to give it to a friend. I got the impression that it was a lady friend, and the gift was an attempt to get lucky; I did a good job (even if the color scheme was purple and yellow--his choice, not mine), so I hope he got laid. Or not, if it was a platonic deal. Whatever. It's always neat to earn money for doing something fun.

--That forty bucks went part of the way towards purchasing tickets to the Celtic Fling in Lancaster PA. It was at the same place that hosts the Pennsylvania Renaissance Faire every year, and the same groups of people were in attendance:
GROUP 1: Nerds. Pseudo-goth and Dungeons-and-Dragons type people who get REALLY into throwing on about eight hundred pounds of costume (read: any combination of lace, corsets, leather, buckles, and those shirts with the laces and floppy sleeves) and role-playing in weird accents for a day. These are the people for whom there are stalls selling Hobbit ears, and furry tails, and who knows what-all else. I know I shouldn't scoff, but I do. I lost count of the amount of unfortunate cleavage I saw, and I am frankly surprised that we only saw one accidental nipple exposure.
GROUP 2: Large rednecky Republican types. Maybe not so much up on their history, but definitely up for the type of event that involves beer, swords, and smoked turkey legs. Again with the scoffing. I can't help it.
GROUP 3: Tourists like A and me, there for the spectacle but not really sure what was happening most of the time.

It was stiflingly, blisteringly hot on the day that we went, so that was miserable, but we got to pet the "royal hounds" (the sweetest, loveliest greyhounds. I want one. Or twelve) and a "baby dragon" (a tiny, sleepy lizard. I want one of those too), and we got to see the band Solas perform for a bit, which was wonderful--I really like them. So we had some fun, but by three-thirtyish we had each sweated away about a quarter of our body weight, so we decided it was time to go.

--I only have a two-day work week this week, and then on Thursday I am leaving for a week-long Vacation-With-A-Capital-Vee and I am SO excited.

That about does it for June--hopefully I will have exciting vacation stories and many more things to talk about in July!

you're my little potato

Several weeks ago, I bought a large sweet potato at the grocery store with the vague idea of turning it into a tasty potato curry at some point during the week. As is the case far too often, however, instead of sticking to my menu plan for the week, I stuck the potato on top of the fridge for safekeeping and promptly forgot about it for a couple of weeks. The only reason I remembered that I had it is because in the relative warmth and light of the kitchen, the darn thing put up shoots. I saw the green stalks poking up like little SOS flags, and I didn't have the heart to throw the thing away. So I put it on the radiator by the window, where it has stayed. And now it looks like this:

When my mom comes to visit I'm going to give it to her so she can bring it back to Boston and put it under the dirt where it belongs. Hopefully it will make more potatoes!

the eight-dollar joke

This is a true story.

This past Sunday, Amanda and I were sitting on a bench in our neighborhood park. I was reading the New York Times, and Amanda was slogging through cover letter rewrites. I was shuffling through the Arts section, and I made some comment about how I liked Caravaggio (there was an article about one of his paintings or something). A guy walking by the bench, stopped, and looked at us, and said "Y'all must be REALLY EDUCATED." We both sort of smiled awkwardly and made "aw shucks" noises, but the guy wasn't done yet. "You guys, seriously. Seriously. Somebody told me to give you THIS"-- and he handed Amanda a little yellow crockery teapot that he was carrying in one hand. We made dubious noises of thanks. "Now hang on, hang on, I'm not finished yet. SOMEbody told me to give you THIS"--and he handed me what he was carrying in the other hand. It was a tarnished and fingerprinty metal cup, engraved with "KY DERBY, 2001." This, he said, was the real deal, and was worth an awful lot of money. Again, we murmured our thanks.

 "Now I want to tell you something, you guys, now listen. Last night I saw two stars in the sky, and tonight imma look up in the sky and I won't see those two stars, because they sittin' right here in front of me."

More "aw shucks" noises.

"Now you guys, listen. Do you think you can help me out? (here we go) I'm for real, I don't do no crack, I got HIV, and I'm just tryn'a get a hoagie and a Gatorade, so do you think you can help me out? Now listen (as we reached for our wallets) I'm for real, I'm for real. You ready? Imma tell you two jokes." He did a little backwards jig-step and prepared himself for his performance. His joke was as follows:

Ok so last night I was up on twenty-third and locust, because I paint, you know, too, I'm a painter, and you know, I seen this guy drive up into the gas station in a cham-PAGNE-colored BENTLEY, you know? And I went up to him and I said, excuse me sir, can I please wash your rims? And he said...but it's raining! And I said, well, can I wash your rims? And he said man, I got a ring on my little finger that's worth more than some people's houses, you know? And I said...but can I wash your rims for you? And he said where's your bucket at? And so I said sir, when you come back out the gas station, your rims will be clean, I promise you, I'm for real.


So he went up into the gas station...and I pissed on all his rims.


That got an involuntary laugh from both of us, and he did another little hop-step, and repeated his piece about wanting to buy a hoagie and a Gatorade, except now it was a hoagie for him and one for his wife, and a Gatorade. So we gave him the cash we happened to have on us--a five and three ones. When he had these in his hands, he looked down at them and started to whine. He literally made a whining moaning noise that usually comes from the mouths of tired four-year olds.

"awwwwnuuuuuhhhhh. muuuuuuhhh....that's it?" He screwed up his face and performed some laborious mental calcuations. "But it's $12.50" We told him that he'd taken all the cash we had (I almost offered to take it back from him, if he didn't like what he'd been given, and he could try to find his $12.50 somewhere else), so he grabbed the Kentucky Derby cup with a muttered "imma sell this off then, this the real thing, worth a lotta money..." and loped off through the park. We kept the yellow teapot.

 But we paid eight dollars for TWO JOKES, dammit, and we only got one. I'm still bitter.