I splurged $12 for a pistol-cleaning-kit this afternoon. I don’t know if its because I’ve started keeping them in their cases (and that’s attracting moisture?) — as opposed to in various unused drawers — but both my revolver and semi-auto are looking like they’re developing rust, so I figure it’s about time I pamper them like the expensive little kiddlings they are.

Pool tables and pool cues? Yep, that’s what this song reminds me of. Oh, also? Killing the Queen.

I bombed my Chaucer Midterm.

I wrote a great essay, two full pages, about how The Knight’s Tale is a classic example of a “Romance” genre.

Unfortunatly, the essay assignment was to write about how The Man of Law’s Tale was a classic example of a “Romance” genre.

Best as I can figure it — we had two essay assignments, and had to choose one — I sort of combined the two, as the other essay assignment was actually about The Knight’s Tale.

Anyway. So that was thirty points right there.

(Thankfully, there’s still a paper and the final!)

Bowling for Boobies.

(I wish the site had more pictures!!!!!)

This is my take-home midterm for my computer night class. I wish he would explain why I got the grade I did … why not an A+ or, let’s admit it here, a failing grade?

(more…)

… from the Octovember Baltimore Blogger Happy Hour.

What: The October/November Blogger Happy Hour.

With: Your hosts! Me and Jennetic.

Who: Baltimore Bloggers, Bloggers, Blog Readers, You, Me, The Pope, Prostitutes. Y’know. Everyone.

Why: Blogs. Beers. Bloggers. More beers. What’s not to love?

When: Wednesday, November 1st, 6pm.

Where: Dizzy Issie’s
300 W 30th Street
Baltimore, MD 21211

If you’re coming, why not cross-post this to your blog?

There’s this little house, difficult to find. The address is on one road, but the only way to get to it is off a gravel drive from another road. Have to loop between a house and a barn, a sharp right, veer left of the trailers, and then a final sharp left towards the back of an aging house, showing its age in wear and tear. You can’t use the porch to get to the residents … for one things, it’s filled with used or broken appliances, furniture, children’s toys.

There’s a side door. As long as the residents of the house aren’t washing laundry — the door opens onto the laundry room — they’ll answer it pretty quickly. As best as I can figure, it’s a husband and wife, an aging parent, and a variety of children, who are thankfully most often heard and not seen.

The problem — the big problem — is with the aging parent. I don’t know whose parent it is (I do assume he is a dreaded “in-law”), but he’s loss of all his senses. Pound on the door, and he opens it right up, and wide.

Loss of senses? Isn’t that supposed to be what you do when the pizza dude shows up?

Not when you’ve got a Maneating Dog. Look, I don’t know dog breeds. I only recently learned how to distinguish a golden retriever from a yellow lab. This is what went through my mind when the Maneating Dog stepped through the door towards me Thursday evening, as from inside the house, the husband could be heard saying, “OH SHIT HE LET THE DOG OUT!”: “Well, at least it’ll be quick.”

The dog was big. Powerful. Huge jaws stained in blood, giant yellow saber-teeth slathered in blood and grease and stringy muscles. The dog’s mighty haunches quivering under fur.

I. Wanted. To. Wet. Myself. Particularly as visions of my death danced before my beautiful blue eyes.

I thought that, maybe, if I could throw the pizzas at the animal, it might stop to devour them allowing me enough time to get back to my car, which was running only twenty feet away.

Thankfully, the husband chose that moment to arrive, grabbed the dog by the collar, yanked it around — off its feet — and threw it into the house, slamming the door behind him. “Stupid old man,” he mumbled. “Doesn’t have the common sense God gave a flea.”

(I work with a lot of people who don’t have the common sense God gave inanimate objects, so I could totally sympathize with him.)’

Anyway. $3 tip. Don’t know it was worth it for nearly having died, but how have you.

Work lately has been slow. At both jobs. It’s like Mother Nature, being an indecisive weak-willed woman, can’t determine if she wants it be winter or summer, so the weather tends to be warmer than it should be in the latter weeks of the nearly-gone October. And it’s dead fucking slow, and we’re overstaffed everywhere, so I’m kicking my butt trying to get more hours, and one of the easiest ways to do that is to ask people who are scheduled for later shifts if I can work the end of theirs.

For example, Saturday, I was scheduled to work open through dinner rush. That would’ve had me out around 7:30 or so, and still broke. So I asked one of my coworkers if I could work their late shift. They agreed, and I was able to stay until a little after ten. Hoorah! An extra couple of hours on my paycheck, and a few extra deliveries taken and extra cash earned.

So I got out of work around ten. Took the sign off my car, put on my jacket, gunned home along a lonely stretch of curving country road called Merryman’s Mill. The speed limit on M.M. is something like thirty. I was probably doing closer to 45ish. I didn’t pay much attention to the car stopped in the eastbound lane until I got close enough to recognize a county police cruiser.

This is what went through my head: Shit.

Actually, closer to: shitshitshitshitshitshitshitshirt.

Shirt?

Moving on.

Cop Car!

One and a half times the legal speed limit!

Now, the cop was stopped next to a residential street, so for all I know, he was just waiting for me to get past before he turned. He had no turn signal on, but does that mean anything? I can’t remember the last time I saw a police car make a signal that didn’t involve flashing red and blue lights, or a middle finger. In my rear-view mirror, I could see the car starting to manuever, but was he turning around to come after me or just turning onto that street?

I’ve got no fucking idea.

Here’s what I did know: if I go straight, I’ve got no turnoffs but one for a good mile and a half, and there’s no way I wouldn’t get busted. But I did have one hope, a narrow, winding, tight, up-a-hill-and-down-it that could dump me almost directly in Hunt Valley.

I won’t lie. I took it. I came up on the entrance so fast I left some rubber. (Let’s be blunt: I saw the cop car, I braked. Then when I thought he might come after me, I hit the gas. I didn’t see any blue and red lights in my mirror! I don’t know he was coming after me! You woulda done the same thing!)

Anyway, I got into Hunt Valley without a cruiser riding my ass, although a cop car passed me on York Road and gave me a heart attack. I was lucky to survive that heart attack, and was relieved to eventually get back to my apartment to find no police car and accompanying officer waiting to arrest me and take me into custody for evading a police officer.

My adrenaline is still pumping!

I don’t know who or what DORAEMON is, but to paraphrase Scotty, “… it’s blue!”

Subtitle: (Seller’s Note: Not Equipped With Vagina)

Saturday night.

Running my ass off because it’s steady-slow not steady-busy and I want to beat Chewbacca back to the store for another delivery. Hard left onto a driveway, crunching leaves under the tires. Aim the car at the front door, leave the brights on and the car running as I grab the hot bag and dash up the stone steps onto the porch.

Wife sees me coming, opens the door. Her kid is with her, excited. If I had to guess his age, I’d say he’s the age where mommy and daddy start talking to him about biology as it related to mommy and daddy and various apendages or lack thereof.

So she’s signing the credit slip, and her husband comes up with a few bucks for my tip, and my car starts running a little loud behind me. I don’t know why it does this, but it’s done it since I’ve had it so I don’t worry about it. Husband inquires if my car is okay, I tell him yeah, of course, “she’s a little tempermental.”

Kid, bless him, says, “Your car has a vagina?” (This is how I know he’s of ‘the age where mommy and daddy start talking to him about … various apendages.’)

Wife and Husband look like they’re not sure if they should crack-up or smack kid. I probably have an expression on my face that says ‘Blog Food!’

I went into the fall really loving Studio 60 from the Sunset Strip, but I can’t help but find it increasingly slow and plodding, more interested in long lectures on Hollywood-related political issues (the Communist Blacklist in the 50′s, for instance, or the ‘liberal guilt’ of certain writers) than in being a show about the cast and crew of a late night sketch show. I’m used to Aaron Sorkin’s political stuff — nevermind The West Wing, ever watched his freshman television effort? Sports Night? That was a half-hour comedy about the crew of a cable sports network. It was, in my opinion, his best show … but even being a show about a sports show, it was still filled with left-wing talking points, which might be slightly more bearable because a.) I’m left-leaning and b.) I loved the show but still could get really old, really quick. Sometimes, there’s a lot to be said for being subtle, as opposed to bashing people over the head for it.

On the other hand, I’ve been increasingly fascinated by NBC’s 9pm drama, Heroes. The Network’s answer to the serial hit Lost, Heroes also features a variety of characters from across the globe (who are becoming aware that they possess unique powers and abilities), and an ongoing mystery unraveled in each new episode, many of which add new dimensions to the show’s scope.

Anyway, I shouldn’t have been home last night to watch either show — I was supposed to meet up with some people from my Roots of Rock & Roll class to study for the Thursday midterm at 6:30 Cook Library … at eight, tired of waiting, I left. Fuckers. Oh well — I prefer to study by myself anyway (and that’s what I’ll be doing a lot more of tomorrow).

When the weather is cold and I’m working, there’s nothing I hate more than a jacket. Coming in from runs, the jacket has to be discarded to effectively crew a station, particularly a food station. Leaving, remembering to re-don the jacket (which may contain cell phones, bank, or keys) is often not done, resulting in another trip into the store to retrieve the jacket.

Look, the long and short of it is this: jackets are cumbersome and a pain in the ass.

I like mocknecks. They go right under your uniform shirt, they provide a measure of warmth when you’re banging on someone’s front door, and when you’re in your car with the heater going, you can cool yourself off by rolling up your sleeves.

Anyway: several years ago, I picked up half-a-dozen mocknecks at Kohl’s (Kohl’s happens to be my favorite clothing retailer, thank goodness they recently opened a store on Ridgely Road!). Those mocknecks I bought are starting to show their age, and I’ve never seen them again at Kohl’s … until the other day, when there was a whole display stand filled with them on sale $8 apiece. Hooray! Picked up an insane number of them today, plus a pair of jeans. My winter clothing shopping is over.

(I should so get a check from Kohl’s for this post).

NOTE: I wrote this back in late August. Don’t know why I didn’t post it then. Anyway, business hasn’t picked up, it’s slow everywhere, and with dropping gas prices, a lot of people want to get in on the delivery biz, so at both shops: less buisness, plus more drivers, equals a lot less income. Suck!

I’ve worked out a monthly budget — one thing that sucks about the pizza biz is that earnings are never consistent, even on a weekly basis. Going into the fall and winter will, of course, help — business (and income!) should increase and stay high through the end of January, which makes it easier to cut back my working hours and still be able to pay my rent.

My first day of classes is tomorrow. Twelve credits. One part time job (the Indy — eight hours or so a week), one full time job (the Franchise — close to forty). I’ll either be working a shortened Monday lunch at the Franchise, or alternating night-shifts at the Franchise (one day off every two weeks? Not awful).

My schedule is going to be pretty darn packed tight from now through December 18th, and I’m happy — and in fact, enthralled! — about this. Tightly regimented schedules generally bring out the best in me — for example, give me an entire day to clean my apartment, and I might change the litter box and reorganize a bookshelf. But if my parents are driving up and I’ve got an hour to get the place clean? Spic and fucking span.

Geisha e-mailed me to let me know my blog was looking effed up. I checked, and on both of my computers it looked fine. She sent me a screencap:

Gah! Bad!

Has anyone noticed my blog looking like that before … ? ICK!

Surfing the internet after Friday’s “Exodus Pt. 2″ a common sentiment I noticed was that just about everyone agreed that it was the “best ever episode!!!!1″ of Battlestar Galactica. I don’t have to wonder why that is – the episode has some really excellent action sequences: notably, Galactica’s inner-atmosphere “free fall”, and then Pegasus’ arrival and eventual demise. There are character moments, too: Tigh’s final moments with his wife, and then Tigh’s return to Galactica (how could your heart not break seeing old, battered, weak Tigh on the wing of the Raptor, one arm in the air as if asking for someone to carry him for he was too weak to continue?); when things looked darkest, Helo’s silent acknowledgement that all their efforts had been in vain and death was coming for all; Lee thanking his command for her sacrifice; Adama’s victory walk through Galactica after; Roslin taking her seat as if half expecting to get blown up.

Best Ever?

No.

As I wrote for my “Ten Best Episodes of Buffy” post, ‘While arcs themselves can probably be rated from “great” to “mediocre” to “awful”, when an episode contains “great” arcs and “awful” arcs it can be difficult to rate the episode as a whole.‘ “Exodus Pt. II” is not only part of the larger occupation/retrieval/aftermath arc of the ‘New Caprica’ storyline, it’s also the second of two directly linked episodes. Taken as itself, the episode is largely a function of a very tight sequence of neat events which, while intermingled with genuinely emotional scenes for certain characters, shortshifts or ignores others, and leaves the audience at the end feeling uplifted, yet rushed.

My favorite episodes remain from the first season: the very first episode, “33″, and a mid-run episode, the first uplifting episode of the show, “The Hand of God.”

Anyway, enough of being a downer about “Exodus Pt. II”, which despite its flaws, I did indeed love.
Predictions!

* Gaeta’s going to die in the next episode.

* Crew shuffle:

1. Lee returns to the flight deck as CAG. He keeps his rank as Commander.
2. Helo remains XO until (when & if) Tigh is able to return to the post.
3. Roslin resumes her Presidency, no one mentions anything about appropriate line of secession or special elections.