OMG WTF, I’m Old

As I’ve mentioned before, since I have now been without cable a few years, instead of watching TV I usually watch original comedy stuff on YouTube – guys like this one and this one and this one, gals like this one, this piece of citrusy goodness, and, of course – these guys, as they’re the home team.

A month or so ago, I was voting in a Survivor-type contest among YouTubers, and I kept seeing this one three-letter acronym used over and over again in comments on people’s videos. It was confusing me terribly as to why people were repeatedly writing this acronym in regards to YouTubers they apparently liked.

Because when I was in college and thereabouts in the Eighties – and into the Nineties, for that matter – all those bad boys with their Black Flag and Minor Threat and Bad Brains records (i.e., the ones I always wound up with – go figure) used to stencil this three-letter acronym on guitar cases and skateboards and stuff. Or my ex’s slightly nerdy, acid-dropping, D&D-playing friends would fake tattoo it on themselves. It was spray painted on the walls (always either in black or red) of at least three apartments I remember in Murfreesboro and two in Nashville, and on the outside of one garage.

You’d have been hard pressed to walk into Cantrell’s, the Exit/In, or Elliston Square in the Eighties and not seen this acronym scrawled on a t-shirt, an Army jacket, or a pair of torn jeans in black magic marker. After all, it was all, everybody’s an anarchist, yada yada and all that… way back then in the ol’ Dark Ages. After all. (I just wanted to fit “all” into this paragraph somehow, just one more time.)

And it – said three-letter acronym – it wasn’t very, well… nice. (And understandably so, since everybody was an anarchist and all that.)

So a month or so ago, I was really having a lot of trouble wrapping my head around why in the world people kept leaving in comments things like:

“(insert YouTube comedian’s name here)… FTW!”

I guess it’s one of the disadvantages to not having kids/teenagers to set me straight – and next time, maybe I’ll have enough sense to just go straight to Urban Dictionary instead of straining my brain over something like “For The Win!” for days. Or a week and a half exactly.

But I guess at least not having teenagers meant I got to spare myself the inevitable ridicule when Mom asked why all these people on YouTube were telling all these other people to f*ck the world, right?

Technicality

I was telling my mom the other night that a question I keep seeing amidst one of my online ventures lately that grabbed my attention immediately was, “Have you ever wanted to see where Elvis lives?”

And my immediate gut reaction was uh, no, I don’t think I want to see where Elvis lives RIGHT NOW just yet, and I’ll inevitably be seeing it one of these days.  As will we all.

I have seen where he LIVED, yes.

OK, I’m picky about words, yes, that too.

So then last night as I was driving back to Memphis from Olive Branch – and about a fair hop, skip & a jump from Graceland – I noticed a billboard:  “WHERE ELVIS LIVES”.  So I guess that’s their current advertising campaign and all.

And at first I thought, well, I guess they told me, huh.  But then I shook my head.  It’s STILL not RIGHT.

I guess “Where Elvis lives ON” doesn’t really have the same ring to it, but even though I’m probably in the minority, there are still gonna be people like me who see that and go, “Ew, NO.”

Goals Are Overrated, Really

One of these days, I’m no longer going to have a host of old posts moved over from the old site that need to be edited and categorized. There’s still 274 of them, mostly from 1997 to 2000. I usually catch the old ones as they come up as hits in my blog stats and fix them then, but god, I can hardly stand to read that old stuff, especially, say, pre-2000 or thereabouts. Partially because there are so many posts about friends of mine who have been dead a pretty long time now, though one of these days I guess I will be glad I documented so much of those years.

But mainly I can’t stand to read them because those old posts just make me wince. For someone who was already (ok, barely) in her thirties when I started blogging in 1997, I find I was rather ridiculous and giggly and I just see some of that stuff and go “ewww”. Or “ugh”.

That’s a goal before I die, though, get all that old crap categorized and edited – edited meaning separated into logical paragraphs. I got lazy and more tired the more mammoth that chore of moving them became and just at some point quit trying to make it all pretty and moved them all in bulk and in big chunks. I mean, I was copying and pasting years and years’ worth of HTML entries. HTML. It was a pain.

And another goal is to get Sarcastro’s old photos re-uploaded to his now-not-that-new blog, still. (Says the Queen of Procrastination…)

Those are reasonable and reachable goals I think, probably unlike the other 5 million goals and projects on the list. I wish there were three or four or even five or six of me and maybe I could get some things FINISHED for a change.

In Which I Respond to the Bez

I haven’t been able to post on any Blogger blogs in months, so I’m probably about to adopt the annoying habit of turning my intended comments on peers’ Blogger blogs into posts on my own blog.*

So, my response to Mike over at Chez Bez is: Non-Southerners**. It came from the Times, after all!

Shoot, everyone knows you if meet a new adult person down here, “What do you do for a living?” is going to follow soon on the heels of (if not before):

“Where are you from?”

“Where’d you go to college?”

“Are you married?”

“Do you have children?”

“Where do you go to church?” (in some circles, anyway, and…)

“Can I get you (some ice tea, a beer, a coke, etc.)?”

And some more, of course.  Nosy or not, I expect some of my kinfolk would have sniffed that it’d be considered rude and impolite NOT to answer those questions.  Folks in the South are just that way.***

* (Fortunately this is now a minority as most have moved to WordPress or otherwise, whew.)

** (Nope I didn’t say Yankee… but I could have. Or Midwesterner or West Coaster or whatever, natch.)

*** (Not saying I agree, mind you.)

P.S. Hee.

Popsicle of Love

1. I do believe you could break my toes off my feet, like icicles, right about now. Not only do I live in the Ancient House from Draft City, but this will be my second winter trying to get by on two (safe and not left on while sleeping) space heaters. Which can’t be on at the same time or they flip the circuit breaker. Yes, I DO get tired of living like a 19-year-old college student sometimes. Except they probably live in better places nowadays than I do, probably.

2. I got so busy switchin’ all my stuff over to Firefox tonight, I forgot all about the newly released Diner Dash 3. Obsessive stay up all night playing games desire being overruled by desire to crawl into warm bed full of covers though, I think. After I warm up the bedroom with the other space heater first, which means I get to sit out here at the desk for an hour freezing some more while I wait.

3. “Icicle” is kind of a dumb word when you think about it.

From the Bottom of a Bottle

I could use one more day off with this long holiday weekend. I wonder if my boss would agree. Sigh.

As I mentioned the other day, anyone who might get offended about jokes about drug and alcohol addiction is going to get offended here on occasion. My ex and my current are both addicts/alcoholics in recovery and, thus being that I’ve paid my dues putting up with their active addiction BS many a time, I can and I will joke about it sometimes. Because crap they do or say is funny sometimes, in its own sick and twisted way. I can find the humor in most anything, even something as pitiful as that issue is. So this is the last time I’ll make any disclaimers about it and I’ll never make any apologies for it. Those that find it offensive are better off moving along. I find it funny so, well, whatever.

That all said, I have hereby basically spoiled my intended post for the day, but never fear. I got addiction-related anecdotes for days, years even, and I feel a bit of a vent coming on, so I’ll get back to you on all that. So, um, yeah… have a nice day and cheerio!

Whatcha Got Cookin’

There are many reasons why I generally don’t cook (even though I can and am a pretty good one, if I do say so myself), but tonight was a shining example and reminder of why next time I get to thinkin’, oh, I’ll cook a little something for dinner tonight (instead of not eating for 72 hours like, well, the past three days, yeah) – tonight was a reminder of why I should just say NO.

I mean, I generally don’t bother with it ‘cos (A) it’s too much trouble to cook for one person and (B) it’s especially too much trouble to cook for one person who especially hates doing dishes more than just about anything in the world. If I mess up a dish I gotta clean it, so I don’t. I have indeed devolved into paper plates and plasticware for the same reasons, but if I actually cook – still gotta mess up real dishes that need to be washed so, again, I generally just say no.

Well, tonight’s good intentions of splitting the house early this evening and running some errands including picking up said foodstuff first got waylaid by something unexpected, and then the next thing I knew, it was almost 9:00 already. Ugh.

I started to say to hell with it, but remember what I said about not eating for 72 hours? And my stomach’s been not just growling but roaring since, oh, I don’t know, noon maybe.

So off I went – even tho I might could have put off dinner a bit longer, there were still a few other things I really needed to pick up at the store anyway. With my sights set on a hit-and-run quick spree – and intentions of spending a minimal amount of both time and money – at Target and then Kroger, I was off.

So, after spending entirely too much time wandering around Target ‘cos there might just be SOMETHING I need I’m not thinking of, right? – I leave almost $100 poorer and with at least a half dozen things in my basket I never intended to get. Three bottles of Downy Free for $9? Hell yeah! It’s like $6.49 for one bottle at Kroger right now, I noticed later. Granted, at the rate I do laundry it will take me two YEARS to go thru that much Downy Free. But hey – I ain’t gonna need to buy any for a while, now, am I?

Kroger was about as short as I expected tho a little more expensive than I intended – would have helped if I’d checked first before leaving and seen that, yes, indeed, I have plenty of flea stuff for the dogs and don’t need to buy another month’s supply for six dogs right now. But otherwise, it was OK.

So now after getting home, unloading the car, and putting everything away, it’s, like, 11:28 p.m. and I’m just now getting ready to eat the first course of this little two-course meal I whipped up that I’m pretty sure, even though I haven’t eaten in over three days, is just not going to be near as yummy as I imagined. I should go back to not eating again.

When I was in my early twenties, I worked a full-time job then, too. But still, when I came home from work, it always seemed like there was SO much time left in the day/evening, hours and hours. Now I work AT HOME and yet there’s just never, ever enough time. I guess part of that is there was a significant other at the time – even tho he was a freeloader, yep, he could be counted on to do SOME stuff. Trade back for that? No f’ing way, not in THAT relationship.

All I know right now is I’m tired and starving, so forgive me for closing here while I go eat My Misbegotten Misguided Midnight Meal (heh). Upcoming – promises, promises, I know – but funny stuff on tap for most of the rest of the week. Stay tuned…

Pieces, Bits & Pieces

I am in Alabama quite frequently and have been for a couple of years now, and nothing much surprises me about that state anymore. I have come to expect all kinds of wild and wacky and weird stuff down there. It does have its advantages, like 70 MPH state highways – and their roads are nicer than Tennessee’s and many of Mississippi’s too, which was a surprise to me early on ‘cos one very clear memory of my childhood is how godawful bad the roads were in Alabama, going thru there on the way to a vacation trip in Florida.

But there are really weird things about that place too. Like, when you are coming into the state from eastern Mississippi on Highway 78, shortly after you cross the line you come to a sign that says the next exit is for the towns of Hamilton and Guin. But between that first sign and the actual exit, there is this curious other sign that says, “Gu-win, Exit (whatever number)”. I’m very disturbed by that sign. It just gives me the shivers every time I pass it ‘cos it’s just so weird. For one thing, when I see “Guin”, and having known many people whose last name is “Guinn”, I pretty much think the pronunciation “gwen” or “gwin” when I see that, like a girl’s name Gwen, much like Josie’s sister Wendy whose name is Gwendolyn, right? But that’s not so bothersome as the fact that, if it is indeed pronounced “Gu-win”… why there is an honest to god state interstate sign proclaiming that. That’s just strange. I am just rather disturbed by the whole thing.

In other news, I received a query from an acquaintance I’ve known for a while inquiring whether or not I was going to change my name when I got married or whether I was going to do the modern-girl thing and either keep my own or, you know, hyphenate it. Well hell yeah I’m changing it! It’s unpronounceable – believe me I’ve heard it mangled in ways you just cannot even begin to imagine, hundreds of times – nobody can spell it – why would I want to keep it? Sure I love my family but I sure haven’t seen any of the women in my family jump to keep it either upon nuptializing. Plus he has an EASY one – easy, easy, super easy. For the first time ever in my entire life of what will then be over four decades I will actually get to finally know what it’s like to have a name nobody can mispronounce and mangle beyond recognition, and one that nobody has to ask me to spell. It’ll be bliss, I tell you, sheer bliss. Well, I’ll still have the Lynn to contend with – people wanting to slap an E on the end, or repeating it back to me as “Lee Ann” because, you know, I’m Southern and some people just hear it like that. I also highly recommend marrying someone who shares the same last name initial as you… those four decades’ worth of various and sundry monogrammed stuff ain’t going to waste, hallelujah! OK I’m outta here, ’til later…

It’s Been a Long, Long Time

Here’s what happened: I got this e-mail the other day, which I still haven’t responded to (because I am just as pathetic as ever about answering e-mail unless you’re my mother or my future mother-in-law in which case you’re probably going to wait a day or maybe two but not much longer since I am lazy but not stupid) asking if the site had died and/or was ever going to get updated, to which I almost replied “Yes” and “Maybe”, but then it occurred to me that that’s a pretty snippy and sarcastic response to some poor soul who’s not had the misfortune (but you LOVED it) of direct exposure to my smart mouth so I thought I’d just shut up and be nice and respond later when I was feeling a bit less KC-ish and just quietly update for now and pretend I wasn’t about to be unnecessarily rude to someone. Yep, I’m afraid in lieu of being haunted (which he always swore he would do, nyah nyah didn’t work) I am instead apparently doomed to channel the only person I’ve ever known that’s a bigger smartass then me at some of the most inappropriate times.

AND I also have become a really big fan of a few web writers (I’m sorry, the words blog and blogger are just like trying to pull teeth without anesthetic for me so I guess I really am old and grumpy now) and I was really wanting to drop ‘em a couple of lines but I was too embarrassed at how pathetic I have been updating here so, you know, I’m attempting to save face and not embarrass myself totally. Although I suppose I should be disturbed that I have kept this on AOL for this long but you know what – I am paying PENNIES for FREAKING TONS of web storage and I have never once had to be preoccupied with the word BANDWITH, not EVER – so, you know, I don’t really care. There’s better ways I reckon but after having dealt with these files on here and all the major renovations and whatnot for getting pretty danged close to ten years now the thought of moving them is as tiring and trauma-inspiring as the thought of moving me after 17 years in the same place… and more on that shortly (heh)…

AND I also killed another computer (of course) in the interim since I was last here and my files are all being held hostage on the old hard drive and I haven’t retrieved them yet, but once I resolved my technical issues with AOL (it was the freakin’ stupidest thing in the world and I can’t believe it took me four years to figure out what was wrong and was by far worse than the 18 hours straight I spent one weekend trying to repair a sick 486 only to find the drive cables were hooked up wrong, tho I swear I checked them a few dozen times and which was my previously most stupid computer geekette f-up in the world ever)… so there was that…

AND Paul Westerberg is on tour again which doesn’t mean a whole lot here since I’m not updating that page tonight anyway but he’s ACTUALLY COMING TO MEMPHIS THIS TIME and I have no one – N-O O-N-E – that can go with me so I just felt like bitching about that.

So anyway I figure there are maybe 4.5, maybe 6.5, people in the world who will show up here eventually and mutter a shocked expletive or two or three under their breath (something along the lines of “daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayum…” – and yeah, if you’re from down here it’s pronounced pretty much just like that) at the fact that I have actually updated after two years of silence. Heck, I don’t even know why I’m here updating when I’m just about dead exhausted, other than the above and the fact that I have extreme stress-induced insomnia at the moment and am sitting here typing, seeing as how I’ve run out of names and other stuff to Google and useless junk to look at and all the other dumb things I have a habit of doing when I’m bored, when I really should be in bed. But, all in all, that’s beside the point. Plus anyone that knows me at all knows I don’t go to bed at a decent hour ever anyway. Nope, some things never change.

But truthfully and seriously… even tho this Graffiti stuff started as an experiment (of some sort, what I couldn’t say) and I really could have cared less who read it or didn’t at the time (eight freakin’ longass years ago)… when I lost my biggest fan (and foe) and his sidekick I kinda lost most of the urge to purge my brain of all thought, intelligent and otherwise, publicly. I dunno, after a while as years progressed here on the Wall, there got to be this cycle where I’d upload a new update, there’d be some smartass (or sometimes downright nasty, or sometimes just a great big laugh) comment in my mailbox the next morning, I just got used to it. Call-and-response, or what have you. So the last couple of times I updated, now lo all those two years ago almost, when I knew that response wasn’t coming ever – I really just kinda started feeling hateful about the whole Graffiti thing. Plus I got busy – real busy – and stayed busy. Busy enough most of the time that now I could use about a dozen clones of me, instead of just the one I was begging for previously…

Then lately – here’s the rub – I’ve been finding myself, when I do have a little spare time – or I’m eating dinner or something, which this is really kind of pathetic but now instead of flipping on the TV while dining, when I do manage to eat which is almost never, I’m liable to go catch up on my reading at Reality News Online (Ken Kellam and Phil Kural ROCK!!) or some such instead or something (since I continue to be a reality TV addict but have become much much much more choosy about what I get into these days) – anyway, I’ve gotten to where there are several personal websites I’ve become fascinated with and read daily. Again as per above – I know, I know, these days they’re called blogs, and now that blog has actually been officially recognized as both a noun (as in, this is my blog) and a verb (as in, to blog), I should be saying that what I’m doing is blogging rather than the ancient dinosaurish updating my Graffiti Wall because the latter now sounds so old-fashioned – but give me a break, I’ve been doing this for eight years now so, yes, in the world of personal weblogs I suppose that makes me old-fashioned. I am old and I’m grumpy, leave me alone.

So anyway, I am highly addicted to reading up on a few, like that of former Real World-Miami cast member Dan Renzi (who was hilarious back then on MTV and is even more hilarious on a daily basis now – I adore this guy), whose blog in turn introduced me to one belonging to this cool chick named Brittney, which at first grabbed me because of the Sparkwood & 21 reference and then when I realized where she is, I find myself somewhat reliving my own disaffected pissed-off youth of my twenties in downtown freakin’ Nashville through her misadventures, which seem to be at least somewhat less debauched and deranged than my own were. Well, unless all her friends turn out to be strung out drugged-up musicians hanging naked off balconies in West End at 4 in the morning and sleeping twelve to a one-bedroom flat. In which case I’d be worried that she is actually my doppelganger walking around the N-town, just 15-20 years younger… it’s already kind of scary that she’s from a small town and obviously dearly loves Twin Peaks. However, she’s not a blonde so probably not, just maybe walking in my ghost’s footsteps from time to time. If it’s true that parts of our spirits sometimes get left behind in places where there was extreme trauma and/or emotion, I’m sure the ghost of 20-21 year old me continues to walk around Elliston Place, pissed off about one thing or another as usual… anyway, I should probably drop her a note or something but then she’d probably think I’m some crazy almost-middle-aged woman obsessed with lost Nashville youth for some strange incomprehensible reason and she’d be right, so I won’t. Ah, the City Without A Subway. Wish for the thousandth time I’d never left.

By the way, I actually had to go up there a couple of weeks ago for a family funeral and that was the first time in a long time I’d really driven right in and around town, not just passing thru, and that was pretty freakin’ weird. I can’t tell you exactly what was so weird because I have given up incriminating myself over past misdeeds for Lent this year, but for those that care driving south on Nolensville Road was not fun and my old route to work down Harding Place was no less sad than it ever was.

Anyway, so back to people that keep their websites updated… then there’s my other new favorite, dooce, run by an expatriate Memphian (well, Bartlett anyway – Bartlettian? Bartlettonian? What exactly do people from Bartlett call themselves anyway?) named Heather who is also somewhat younger than me and is such a fabulous writer I am in tears of laughter and joy and shrieking daily. It’s a total hoot and I luv her daily photos. And her dog looks suspiciously like he might be a relative of Dobie, but I don’t think she got him in Memphis so I guess not…

Well, so anyhow, I got to reading other people’s stuff on a regular basis and kept thinking about this here Graffiti Wall and finally just gave in and came back. Lucky you, huh? You know you missed me…

But really the really disturbing thing tho, now that I’m here, is there is just not THAT much new to report. Oh, I’m sure if I think real hard for a while (which I can’t right now, I’m too tired and too delirious) there are some dormant rants just waiting to be let out and maybe I’ll get to some of that soon, but really, as far as what’s new since 2003… well, not much.

But I guess there is some… for one thing, I have a new job, for the first time in 14 years. It was kind of a have-to situation – no, I didn’t get fired – my boss more or less retired to do something else so I had to by default. I had three months’ notice almost, but the job market was so crappy down here at the time that by the time those three months rolled around, I still didn’t have a new job to go to – but I had two interviews the day after my last day. I stayed unemployed for almost a week this past summer (which of course threw me into a state of near-panic), but by the next week I had two job offers and that was weird – that was the first time in my life I have EVER turned down a job! And, of course, took the other one… still in healthcare but somewhat of a different position than I have ever worked before, and much lower key, less responsibility. Frankly I was ready for it as I was verging close to burnout in the field and, well, sick of dealing with people, patients, doctors, insurance companies, co-workers, etc., about to go postal and all that cheery stuff – so this felt like a good move (and I was right). Lower pay, but only because I had gotten a raise in January of last year – my salary at my new job is the same as it was before I got the raise, so no big deal and frankly – because of this next part – I could have really cared less if it was even less…

Now, here’s the part where you start to hate me (it’s OK, everyone does, even my mother and isn’t there a law against hating your own child, especially when it’s your only one?!?!?)… because… I work at home! Hahahaha! Oh yeah, baby, make noooo mistake – I LOVE IT!!!! I get up in the morning, I take the dogs out, I fix my coffee, I sit down and go to work. Sometimes I even work in my pajamas. It’s really awesome, I love my job and I love the people I work with, and I am spoiled forevermore about traditional jobs, I will never want to have to “go into” work again anywhere ever. The good thing is I can probably stay at this job indefinitely no matter where I may go, since 99.99% of it is over the Internet anyway. And, though I do work a set schedule and have to be online working when I’m scheduled… as far as extra and overtime I can work anytime of the day or night, naturally. I just love it. Very very happy with this. Best decision I ever made and I totally lucked into it coming up when it did.

There are some strange unexpected things about working at home, though. Like, for instance, I find that most days at the end of the day working I feel like I need a shower again… but that’s mostly because I have four almost 10-month old puppies at home that are constantly rolling around in the dirt and mud outside (often dragging each other by the tail thru the mud) and they are usually getting their muddy paws on me during our outside breaks. But that’s been a nice perk – we can have our little outside breaks through the day, which has been a godsend with young ones around again (more about that later). I also actually, even though I work only four days a week (I work 10 1/2 hour shifts), feel like I have even LESS spare time than I did when I worked five days a week, which seems strange. But it’s still really killer to have that third day off every week – would be nicer if it was a Monday or Friday so I could stretch out the weekend a bit, but maybe someday, for now I’m just happy to have what I have. Since I interact with my boss and co-workers mostly via e-mail and the occasional phone call, and the boyfriend is currently residing about 450 miles southeast of here, I sometimes spend days on end where I don’t speak to any living soul in person other than canines and felines, but that’s OK, I kind of like it that way. Were KC here, he would be torn between deeming me regressed into total and complete social retardation and being beside himself with glee that I was now available at his EVERY beck and call and whim 24/7 and he and Greg and I would be on 10.5 hour IM all day every work day. It would have been fun, now it’s just sad, but that’s okay now.

Anyway, that’s some of the biggest news since March 2003 when I was last here… other than that, what else have I been up to, oh, I don’t know, just things. I still work a part-time job I always have had (always worked at home there but that was just “extra” work) which is getting harder and harder to keep up with lately but I’m managing. And I have the equivalent of another full-time job because I am one of three senior administrators of a rather large (almost 40K members) international website that I have been involved with for a couple of years now… not really at liberty to say what or where but it’s about a cause that’s been pretty near & dear to my heart for some time now. I guess that’s probably another reason I haven’t been here messing with the personal site for a while… I get most of my techgeekchick urges out there, playing around in the back end techie stuff on the site. From a techie aspect, it’s really awesome, man… 14-15 years ago when I was running my little BBS in Memphis, I never dreamed there would one day be the kind of stuff like the software we use on site now. I get to playing around with the buttons and switches just to see what stuff will do. And haven’t crashed it yet… I don’t think it’s really crashable unless you have direct access to the server tho (which I don’t – yet) and the server’s located in Texas, soooo… I might be a little more careful flipping switches when I have server access, heh. Anyway… as far as my work with the site, it’s not that I’m not proud of what we’ve done – I’m very much so – but that leads to some personal issues that in this day and age are best not publicly divulged, at least not at this point in time. I’ll just say that I spend the majority of my spare time pouring effort into this cause and we have already seen many, many positive changes and improvements just in the little over two years I have been involved in it, and it’s nice to be able to witness direct results of something you have worked hard towards and given so much effort like that. Plus – we have annual conferences/conventions/what have you! Last year was spent in sunny Florida, this year headed to San Francisco (I hope, still not positive I’m going to be able to go) – I visited SF when I was 14 and have been wanting to go back as an adult ever since so I am really, really looking forward to it and hoping the trip will pan out for me. (UPDATE – since I originally started writing this a while back the conference has been cancelled so no SF for me, not this year anyway.) Anyway, what an awesome thing and force in my life this has been… and having now met most of my colleagues in person and many have become friends for life… including my adorable French friend who would just give me his car – his car!!! – if he could ship it over here to me because my current one is so old and pathetic (apparently one doesn’t have much use for an automobile in Paris, but I would certainly make use of it going to Paris, Tennessee, hahaha…). Damn shame too ‘cos it’s one of those funky little bitty European cars with some kind of animal name like Panther or something. Shoot. Free car and I can’t even get it… which is, as usual, my luck…

For a long time I was out of town more often than not, though not so much anymore… part of that in recent months anyway has been because of the influx of very young canines, as previously mentioned, tho they have finally gotten old enough I can leave them overnight once in a while thank goodness. I have lost some and gained some in the past year… my beloved 11 year old lap dog of a Doberman, Baby, finally left us last fall after having spent a year of her health deteriorating and having gone blind the year before as well. Less than a month later, a black Lab mix I had wound up with – and not unlike how I wound up with Baby who begat Dobie, because the neighbors really couldn’t keep them and unbeknownst to me at the time she moved in with me Baby was pregnant with Dobie – so too was Satin, who was a very young thing who’d become my buddy after moving in next door. She had gotten lost for a couple of weeks and I had told her owners if she showed up, she could stay here – they’d been having trouble with her indoors and outdoors and she had been practically living over here with us anyway. Well, on her little two week “vacation”, she got knocked up, which I found out for sure several weeks later, and on Memorial Day weekend last year gave birth to five pups – none of whom looked anything like her. They were about the biggest newborn puppies I’d ever seen – and, they were (another very unexpected surprise) white with black spots, except for one. Tho the white with black spots would lead one to think “Dalmatian” – nope, that wasn’t it. I wasn’t supposed to keep any of them, then everyone who was going to take one but one wound up backing out at one time or another – so now, ten months later, I have four young dogs who do not look like Labs and I have NO clue what their paternal parentage could have possibly been. They don’t even look alike, other than the white with black (and two with brown) markings. In short, their paternal parentage has been about as clear as Dobie’s ever was (though I have some better guesses about him these days at least). But they’re all adorable, especially my one little perfect girl (the only girl) who when her intended home backed out I knew wasn’t going anywhere. It’s like living in a nursery school 24/7 – and I was NOT intending to ever acquire more dogs, ever – but you know, things happen. Their mama, however, unexpectedly passed away less than a month after Miss Baby, an acute onset of what I could only figure out must have been hemorrhagic gastroenteritis and which happened so fast she was gone before there was time to do anything, which I hated not only because she was a really good dog, but she had been only a baby herself, just 15 months old. So now I only have Dobie, who just turned 10 (!!!!!), and my great big fat huge Beagle-Dachshund, Lulu, who is also elderly…. and these four little brats. And of course the cats, all of them still, no new additions and no losses there. So still a houseful… we manage. I had just been looking forward to eventually having one day only cats, because they are so much more low maintenance… but obviously it wasn’t in the cards and I’m frankly not all that surprised. By the way, I also think one of the puppies is either retarded (really) or autistic, Bruiser – he poses a bit of a challenge sometimes, but he’s a sweetie. Daisy is, again, my perfect little girl, who is cute and prissy but don’t let that fool you ‘cos she can beat the crap out of all of her brothers even tho they’re twice as big as her, and she also thinks she’s a vicious guard dog (the boys are too lazy to care). Buster with his white body and black head, I kind of intended to keep all along and he very oddly has always kind of looked like a pot-bellied pig when he’s laying on his side on the floor sleeping. Then there’s Petey, who is HUGE and has this GREAT BIG HEAD and was born with a big (now much smaller tho) white question mark on his black head and minds me perfectly and is so gentle even tho he’s the biggest, and is allllll about food. Anyway, yes – it’s very active around here these days. Pictures soon on the site I hope, one thing at a time right now tho…

My father, who as most know had been sick for a long time, passed away in September 2003… miss him, hated it to happen, but on the other hand was glad all that suffering and pain was finally over. You would think that at 38 years old you wouldn’t feel too terribly orphaned, losing a parent like that… but I have decided I don’t think it really matters at any age, except it probably sucks worse when you’re still a kid. I guess, I’m just theorizing there. And of course I’m no stranger to death, having lost nearly two dozen of my friends at this point… but yeah, it’s different.

And on a final note of news… I nowadays am what one would call, um, betrothed… yes, such an ancient and biblical word courtesy of my VERY Catholic significant other… anyhow, well, couldn’t be happier, story’s been 16 years in the making, right under my nose all those years and didn’t even know it, and so on and so forth, yada yada. Don’t mistake my flippancy for lack of enthusiasm – I’m just tired plus I can really only say so much. Call it crazy, here I am pushing 40 but still feeling just a smidgen (not much, ‘cos the truth is I really don’t give a ****) of guilt at having violated one of the cardinal rules of small town girlhood, one of the ten commandments if you will, that being thou shalt not get in a serious relationship with one of your best friend’s boyfriends, even if it’s been 15 or 20 or more years, by god. If you didn’t grow up in a small (and probably Southern) town the severity of this violation will likely be a somewhat incomprehensible concept, but suffice it to say that even though Kelli and I have been best friends through our teens, college days and thus far into adulthood, there is still a part of me that will never ever forgive her for having kissed my high school sweetheart, the one whom I almost married, before I did (another one of those cardinal rules – don’t be sucking face and messing around with someone whom one of your best friends could end up married to or at least in an otherwise long-term relationship later or you may live to regret it, possibly for life). Likewise, she can hold a similar grudge against me for messing up one of her own potential life partners – once upon a time we were dating cousins and I dumped the one I was dating, after which not long after the other cousin dumped her (which leads to another rule – if you and one of your best friends are going to date brothers, cousins, or any such tandem pair then you make any and ALL decisions together or risk being held responsible for god only knows WHAT for the rest of your life). However, in retrospect, and I think she will agree, this rotten lousy selfish rash act of mine actually turned out to be a blessing in disguise as her half of the cousin team has reappeared later in life and turned out to be a real **** so now one could say she has me to thank for saving her from potential lifelong misery! Yep, there are many nuances and anomalies in the whole concept ‘cos, well, you know, we come from small towns and you run out of new people to date after a while and things get potentially (and all redneck jokes aside, not literally) sort of incestuous, but you realize what I’m talking about here is really super serious, long-term, maybe you almost got married and maybe you didn’t but still pretty damned serious relationships. But I digress, and how’d Kelli get into this conversation anyway since she has nothing to do with this current thing…

Well, to make a long story short, my significant other and I were once a part of two OTHER couples 15-16 years ago and, well, we are just slow. (ha!) It took us that long to figure out the wrong two people were together in those two couples and so, well again, here we are, now over two years after we both became aware of that amazing discovery at almost exactly the same moment, socially retarded as we both are (ha! again). Probably needless to clarify at this point (rolling eyes, I know I have begun to ramble… oh you missed me, admit it…), the female half of that other couple was one of my best friends since I was a kid, so yeah, even tho I have not lived in my hometown in 21 years almost now and even tho I’m, again, pushing 40 now (in case anyone forgot), there is still just a little teeny tiny bit of small town guilt about that fact just on the basis of violating probably the number one most important cardinal rule (but really when it comes down to it I don’t feel one bit guilty about it… in other words, pshaw!). But still, as the aforementioned Kelli herself (who has violated such rules over and over and over again and totally sans guilt pretty much every time) said to me a couple of years ago when I informed her of whom I had hooked up with, just to be sure and remind me in case it hadn’t crossed my mind already -

“Lynn, you just don’t DO that!!” – emphasis on you, meaning the very idea that I would do such a thing was so incomprehensible as to possibly be a sign of the apocalypse. And she is right – I never dated ANY of my friends’ boyfriends, with the exception of two and they, frankly, just don’t count. One I was sent out on a date with as a proxy when that friend had to go out of town, so that was what one would call sanctioned or endorse – and another whom we all kind of just passed around anyway, plus it was just impossible to truly get serious about him and listen to me and listen to me well here, a few dozen gals besides myself would say the very exact same thing, I’ll have you know. So, in summary, up until quite recently, I have been squeaky clean on that deal. Unlike some of my friends who will remain unnamed but their names start with K (but she recently married a really really nice guy whom none of us have ever dated before so I should really cease picking on her about having dated EVERY single young male person within two whole counties for lo those 20 or so years)… I was a saint among Southern divine sisterhoods and all that rot. Heh.

Anyhow – yeah, I’ve violated the big one, so sue me. Actually my significant other has as well – the fourth, other male half was his friend as well – but he’s a city boy (not this city but another) so those small town rules don’t matter (and therefore he could really and truly give a ****), but still there’s just no getting around that I’m with my former best friend’s former boyfriend and he’s with his former best friend’s former girlfriend. As for him, the only thing that’s even mildly interesting to him about small town sort of stuff is the fact that once when he had the chutzpah to call me a “country girl” I very quickly reprimanded him and corrected him that I have never ever even once lived in the country except to have lived one mile outside the city limits, which really doesn’t count, once for a couple of years and I am most certainly and assuredly NOT a “country girl”, I am a TOWN GIRL, dammit. Which continues to this day to be an endless source of amusement for somebody but personally I just don’t find it very funny at all… anyway…

But yeah, I’m still kind of waiting for this inevitably uncomfortable and touchy situation to rear that aspect of its ugly head – somehow miraculously it didn’t at my 20 year high school reunion last year, tho I was fully expecting and prepared for it, but since the eventually offended party didn’t show it didn’t happen. I just know that while it frankly doesn’t matter a bit what either of the eventually offended parties think ‘cos it’s obvious now who belonged together in the first place – it ain’t gonna be pretty. (shrug) Although in the case of my former significant other, in that case I REALLY REALLY don’t care, matter of fact I am looking forward to the day the phone inevitably rings – because it always does, eventually – and boy won’t THAT one be surprised when I hand the phone over so Mr. Right can tell Mr. Waaaaaaaaaaaay Way Way Wrong exactly why I don’t wish to speak with him and exactly what I feel he should go do with himself… (Mr. Right hates the idea of that whole concept by the way, mainly because of his dislike for his former friend my ex, but I just think I’ll have SUCH a sense of peace I haven’t quite had in darn near 20 years at that moment… ahhhh… some things are worth waiting for…)

Anyhow, well, there ya go, that’s about as much high drama as I get these days ‘cos frankly me and him are both getting old and boring and all set in our ways and stuff. I mean, you know, technically I could be somebody’s grandmother at this point (thankgodthankgodthankgod NO, but my old and dear friend Julie who is a year younger than me is, hahahaha…). So I would like to think I am beyond spewing much spite about how I wasted pretty much all of my twenties for absolutely nothing, but just on the off chance Mr. W.W.W.W., who probably still hasn’t figured out how to operate a computer yet anyhow, does drop by here, I have three things to say: (1) Nope, you’re not imagining things or having an acid flashback; (2) you’re damn right that’s who I’m marrying; and (3) You know what, you were absolutely right to try to keep us apart all those years, even though you were not only too self-centered to be conscious that you were doing it, but too selfish and self-centered to be aware that the reason you were doing it was because you felt threatened and inferior – and rightly so! (To everyone else – sorry – I’ve been getting impatient and waiting about two and a half years to say that, it just feels good to practice… but isn’t it kinda fun to be in on such a potentially icky and ugly and uncomfortable domestic squabble when it’s not your own? Heck I’m right in the middle of it and I think it’s funny, believe you me I will be laughing…)

On an almost ending note, and this will be a huge surprise to some… I think it’s finally time I blow this joint, i.e., uproot and leave where I’ve been the last 17+ years. Matrimony is still a little while away but I really outgrew being here ages ago and there’s not much reason to be here anymore and think it’s time for a change, still ironing out the details but think I might be back among my old stomping grounds before too long. It will be a much desired and nice change of pace – this city’s grown nasty and most of the fun left it a long time ago. And I won’t, if I do this, be far from the aforementioned City Without A Subway… plus they got Blockbuster and 24-hour Wal-Mart and a UPS Store and even Walgreen’s (!!!) in my hometown now!! But tune in later when I will be inevitably griping about not being able to attack Best Buy and CompUSA and the lingerie department at Dillard’s at my every whim now… not that I do a lot of any of that nowadays anyway but you know, it’s the principle and contrary to what SOME people think is soooooo funny, I have actually been a City Girl for a pretty long time now, twenty years in fact. Been a looooong time since this chick has been permanently stuck in the sticks. Next stop after that is that city in East Tennessee, but it should be amusing for a few years while I lament the lack of a Waffle House within 50 miles and get used to small town stuff again. Good thing I have gotten used to doing most of my shopping online anyway…

And finally – I must say this because even tho I hate it like you don’t even want to know what, there are those it will make feel ancient and I think that’s hilarious and just can’t resist – I will turn a whopping 39 years of old, old, horribly old age next week. Heck, really, I don’t even look like I did at 29, ten years ago – I haven’t been this skinny in probably fifteen years, my hair (still blonde of course) is halfway down my back and has never ever been this long, and tho all the females in my family age very well I really thought five and ten years ago I had missed that gene and was going to age horrifically so it’s kind of a pleasant surprise and very unexpected. But turning 39 is still kind of icky… I would probably feel horrible about it but just in the last couple of months one person has commented directly and I have been informed secondhand of two other persons’ comments that in some pictures of me they recently saw I looked like I was (A) in my early twenties (yes!!!) and (B) a teenager (double yes!!!) and the ones that made the early twenties comment couldn’t BELIEVE I was even in my thirties at all (triple yes!!! SCORE!!!) so even though I responded that they were all blind but that was very nice of them to say so, secretly I am, like, – and secretly pleased, especially since ain’t nobody telling the significant other that he looks like he’s in his twenties even tho he’s a little over two years younger than me and especially since he thinks it’s real damned funny that I’m turning 39. So pardon me for a little vanity here, I can’t really gloat (and gloat, and gloat, and gloat) about it anywhere ‘cept here with y’all ‘cos everyone else just rolls their eyes and makes smartassed remarks from the significant other to my mother (isn’t there a law against insulting your own child, especially when it’s your only one?!?!?). Well, so anyway, it just goes to show you that there’s something to be said for being immature and unmarried without children and socially retarded after all!!…

’til soon… hopefully not too long, but I don’t think it will be. Thanks for still dropping by now and again if you’re still doing so… and hey, if you’re someone I’ve not heard from in a while or none of the 4.5 people I know still do come by on occasion and hear from here and there (and not the loser I wasted ten years of my life with, natch), maybe drop me a line or something. I probably would either (A) love to hear from you or (B) maybe be past biting your head off and chewing it up and spitting it out, depending on what you did. Oh, I’m just kidding (maybe) – but seriously, say hi and say you’re alive and we’ll all be… one step closer to world peace! Or something. See ya.

In the City

Yeah, I know… tell you what, let’s just pretend last week the Wall here fell into some kinda alternate parallel universe kinda thing and fell victim to a hostile takeover by the Evil Doppelganger Lynnster and held hostage for almost a week, that’s certainly more exciting and adventurous than the truth… probably a lot nicer and happier too, actually.

In any case, I’ve had almost a week’s vacation from it since last Monday night and that turned out to be, somewhat surprisingly, enough. I really wasn’t expecting to get back to it until after the holidays at the earliest, but after some discussion with my crack team of Lynnster Zone consultants (all four or five or six of ‘em), that’s it, vacation’s over.

The past week resulted in some fun viewer mail tho with some great quotables, like this one: “You haven’t been quiet in the twenty-four and a half years I’ve known you.” Giggle. And then there was this one, in response to a remark that basically my goal in life is to become the stereotypical crazy crabby old maid hermit cat lady… “No good, cat ladies don’t have dogs or if they do, they aren’t as big as Dobermans.”

And I wish I could tell you what Stefanie’s totally inspired (!!!) suggestion for my Halloween costume this year was… but I can’t. (snicker)

In any case, yeah, I’m back. So, guess what yellow dog was selected as Pet of the Month at the Pet Dreams pet treats website for October? Dobie must be one of the most famous dogs on the Internet at this point. Only problem was I didn’t find out about it until October 31st, so they didn’t have a pic of him up, although I sent them one when I found out, maybe they’ll put it up for a little while, dunno. I can’t even win a lousy few cents at Bingo in October, but my goofball of a dog wins something he needs like a hole in his head, more dog treats.

Speaking of dog treats, I keep a Rubbermaid tub full of the suckers in a very high place in my house, high out of the reach of brainless Dobermans and such… came home from work the other evening to find the tub upside down on the floor with the lid off, and completely empty. I have a feeling Molly the Spiderman Cat, she who has been spotted up in that high place on occasion, is probably the dogs’ favorite cat at present.

Anyway, obviously my hot winning streak I had going there for a while must be over, I didn’t win anything anywhere at all in October (pout). Amazon.com has got a pretty cool “name that tune” kinda contest going right now that pays out $1000 if you get it right that day, and I’ve aced four or five of the songs now but have I won the drawing, nooooo. And CDnow has a pretty easy trivia one going on right now too that I’ve aced every time, and there for a few weeks was giving you $5 or $10 off a purchase if you got the answers right, but then this week, just when I know exactly what I’m gonna buy with that discount – no $5 or $10 off! What’s up with that?!

Oh well… I find myself developing all kinds of new superstitions lately, like, if I draw North to begin a game of Mah Jongg , I won’t play it… I don’t like being East on the first draw either, tho I’ll usually go ahead and play it thru; as long as I draw South or West, everything’s cool. My horoscope in the paper lately is saying eerily weird stuff, and the other day I had lunch at the best Vietnamese/Chinese/Korean food place in town, and the fortune in my fortune cookie said something like, “All the plans you have right now are going to succeed”… I thought maybe I should burn it or something before I jinx myself, but I didn’t (or, rather, haven’t yet).

So anyhow… so I heard last week that an all-Memphis music show called Radio Memphis is going to be broadcast on something like forty stations in Europe soon, that’s pretty cool.

Even cooler is the news that we are finally getting a movie theater again in Midtown… yay! I am so sick of having to drive all the way out to the Ridgeway Malco or the old Fare Four every time I want to see a movie, this is great news. (I know some folks familiar with both me and Memphis are now thinking about where in town I live, and thinking, “But wait…!” Well, forget it, the Highland Quartet hasn’t shown anything good in years.)

Anyhow, the new theater on Overton Square is going to have an outdoor patio and a wine bar or something as well. This is all pretty cool, and, cooler still, there’s allegedly going to be another one built off the Square in the fairly near future, or so they say… this one a major-run theater, whereas the first one is to be more or less an art-house type place (which is fine enough with me, those flicks are what I wanna see anyway). What I can’t figure out is, where’s everyone going to park? The first one is to be built in the lot on the north side of Overton Square. The second one is to be built in the parking lot that is currently on the south side of the Square. Anytime I’ve been down on the Square on the weekends, both lots have been packed with cars… and there are no more parking lots in the immediate vicinity. I don’t get it, but hey, whatever, at least I won’t have to drive all the way out to Bartlett anymore to see a movie, yay.

Anyway… the coming month is going to be filled with visits and visitors, neato, already have visitors (if you can call them that) ‘cos our favorite hotshot producer pal is in town and, simply to surprise me, so are Greg and the quite pregnant wifey Beck. We’ve had a good time this weekend… there’s probably only one person that can truly appreciate this, but Becky and I went into this little shop Saturday night and I came out showing off this awesome Stax Records shirt I got and Mr. Hotshot deadpans (and inadvertantly gives me yet another quotable quote): “Right, just what you need, Lynsey, another t-shirt.” (snicker) (The irony here is that the person that is at this very moment laughing his head off about this is the very reason I keep having to buy more t-shirts because he steals them from me every chance he gets… common thief. :P )

Anyway, so there’s the ex-Nashville contingent in town for a few weeks, and next weekend I get to briefly see and chat with a very longtime Usenet newsgroup buddy, and meet someone from the Poison Pen list as well, all very cool, then the next weekend is the annual girls’ slumber party (which for some reason we never got around to having last year, Kelli’s fault I’m sure), plus Florida for Thanksgiving, so a lot going on still to come, whew.

So, Happy Halloween a little late… I wanted to give out Fruit Stripe gum (remember the old commercials with the Fruit Stripe Zebra…?) for Halloween, but (A) I couldn’t find any (I had no idea it even still existed until recently!!), and (B) I wasn’t home anyway, so. It was awfully warm for Halloween here tho, not very Halloweeny at all. I think my favorite Halloween ever was the year I dressed up and got made up as one of the Baseball Furies from the movie The Warriors… now that was a pretty cool costume. Only problem was my face paint started cracking midway thru the evening and made my face itch and by the next day I looked like I had hives or something, too bad there wasn’t a costume party the next night too, I could have gone as poison ivy with a huge hangover or something.

Well, I think this is enough for now, so, ’til later and stuff…