Now with Added Smoke Flavor

I went out on Saturday night to see Big City Burlesque, one of the retro-burlesque troupes in town (there are three). Not being attentive to the flyer, I showed up about forty-five minutes early, so I got my ticket and walked over to a local cafe to grab a snack.

As I sat, idly perusing the freebie newspaper I'd picked up on the way in, I noticed vaguely that the cafe was awfully smokey. I was on the patio so I assumed someone was smoking at an adjoining table. Or maybe some heavy diesel burner was going by. God, it WAS smokey. What on earth...?

I glanced up to realize, I had set my own newspaper on fire with the candle on the table. Aaargh! Newsprint burns quite fiercely in case you've wondered. I blew on it, but that only made it worse. Fortunately I had the presence of mind to roll the paper up quickly and smother it. And fortunately the tables around me were filled with jaded hipsters who apparently did not notice my attempt at inadvertent self-immolation, because they would have had to stop comparing their eco-chic outfits in ordere to do so.

Still, embarrassing. Thank god the waiter was stoned and I wasn't wearing polyester. I'll be able to go back.

Once again proving I don't have to go far from home to get myself in trouble.....

The Unbearable Lateness of Being

Today's my last day on the home schedule - I start a new project tomorrow, and even though it's not one I'm really interested in, I am so glad to be gainfully employed again that I'm sharpening my mechanical pencil and dusting off the adding machine. (There's some irony to the fact that I failed algebra repeatedly as a schoolgirl, and now make my living almost entirely with math).

But the big change is the schedule. When I am working at home, I slowly shift my body clock backwards, closer to my natural circadian (is that the right word?) rhythm, and closer to my boyfriend's, who runs a restaurant and is always up til three in the morning. Within a couple of days I, too, am sleeping until 8.30 AM and thinking vaguely that I should turn in about midnight.

But oh, once production starts again - ouch. I have to be in the office by 8.30, showered and dressed and orally dentifriced, alert and ready. Since I'm a slow waker, and I have to drive half an hour to get there, that means the alarm's going off tomorrow at six. Ugh. I haven't seen a single-digit wake-up call in a month.

This....will be ugly.

Mother Nature Strikes Back, V2.0

Appaaaaaarently, Bees do not like publicity. Yesterday morning - mere days after I brought them to your attention, and while I was having my morning, "aaaaawwwww" glance at them- a bee flew up from the hive, got tangled in my bangs, and BAM! stung me just under my right eyebrow. My face now looks like the Mets requisitioned it for batting practice - that is, if the Mets could hit anything this year besides the bottom of the standings - and I would be shopping for an eyepatch if I wasn't too embarrassed to leave the house.

I wonder if Topshop sells eyepatches online? Finally, a real excuse for internet shopping.

I should be fine in another day or so, but ow ow ow it hurt. Bees! Love them, but saddened by bang-diminished navigation.

The Visccitudes of Nature

So, my hot water heater has given up the ghost, and it announced that fact by pouring water all over my laundry room the day before yesterday. Thank god I rent. I figured, not a problem, I'll deal with cold water for a couple of days, and hopefully the landlord will get it replaced quickly. It's already spring, the daffodils are popping and the chipmunks are out, so it's not like it's December.

So of course that means I woke up yesterday to my first day of cold showers, and found that it was SNOWING. In Atlanta. In March. I know the heat's on in the house and all, but soft, fluffy flakes of coldness - every one different! - did nothing for the shower morale. I got an ice-cream headache on the OUTSIDE of my head when I washed my hair.

Mother Nature: a cranky, untrustworthy bitch, given to strike at any time.

hobbylobbyhobbylobby

Once again proving that I don't have to travel far to get myself in trouble:

Last night I had to take a package to the late drop off at fedex, at the Atlanta airport. The station is actually on the airport grounds, and if you get there less than five minutes before the cut off time, they run your package out to the plane and pass it up to the pilot thru the driver's side window.

I pull up, tires smoking, trying to beat the cut off time, and in my haste I hit the speed bump a little harder than I should, and the THUMP somehow activates the (turned off) cassette in the tape deck, which just happens to be an instructional tape on how to speak Arabic, in preparation for my trip to morrocco next spring.

So as I pull into my parking place in front of the fedex, in the airport, my stereo starts blaring ALLAHINSHALLAHMYCULINSALLEM....

I mean really. Do things like this happen to anybody but me?

I'd call it a Hole in the Wall...

...but that would be disrespectful to actual holes.

I haven't mentioned it but I was in Chattanooga, TN fo several days over the last two weeks for work - oh, the exciting places I get to - and I had a fun night out with two of my buddies on the crew in a local barbeque joint.

(Actually, Chattanooga's a lot of fun, the downtown is very walker-friendly and they have a great Aquarium there.)

One of our nights there we got off early enough to do some wandering around downtown, and feed my barbeque fixation. We'd seen several places we wanted to try, and one chain - Famous Dave's - that we didn't, but I was obsessed with a place about 3 blocks from our hotel.

It was the classic hole-in-the-wall joint - crumbling like a biscuit, one window boarded up, an enormous smoker parked on the sidewalk outside (I wonder if they take it in at night?), and old guys sitting around out front. I suppose they were playing dominos but even that was to much effort, since we were in the middle of a heat wave and it was 95 degrees at 9 pm. So mostly they were sitting around sweating.

We tooled in - me, ravenous as ever, Andy the Gay Biker, and our loyal assistant Kari, who would probably rather have eaten at Applebee's - and took seats at a battered formica table with one short leg. The place was clean, if you didn't look to closely. If you looked closely you felt slightly sick. A woman as battered as the table came out and took our orders. She had the short leg issue too. It was the kind of place that, instead of ordering off the menu, it was safer just to ask what was available. You avoid disappointment.

The service was slow - the waitress may have also been the cook - but it gave us time to admire the decor, which was done in Early American Homeless Shelter. Everything that was there, had been there, for a verrrrry long time. And had the dust coat to prove it. The only thing gleaming in the flickering flourescent light was a wall of barbeque trophies. There must have been fifty of them. I'm not sure where they came from - this didn't look like an operation that went on the road - but they were lovingly polished and displayed.

Our food was great. It had to be, in a place like that. It had authenticity by the bucket. Andy and Kari got ribs, I got chopped pork, tender and juicy with bits of crackling. The ribs were better. I know because I stole some of Andy's. The mac and cheese was rad. The fried okra was out. Damn. How can you run out of okra? Andy got fries instead. I went for pasta salad. What the hell I was thinking I don't know. It was terrible.

The rib sauce was the Georgia sweet tomato-y style, with an intriguing bitter edge that may have been herbal or may have been from baking in a pot on the top of the stove all day. Still not quite sure. We polished it off while listening to an older man in the corner booth ramble loudly about the drug trade in the neighborhood and the government. All atmospheric southern diners have a guy like this. I think it's in the building codes. Gorged on pork, we left huge tip and waddled out into the night, steaming slightly in the humid air.

I'd give you the name so you could try it yourself, but the neon sign out front was broken, so I couldn't read the name. It started with an F. Franks? that sounds right. But trust me, when you see it you'll know you are in the right place. Your common sense will be saying, "run! run like the wind!" but your nose will be luring you in, like a character in a cartoon, your feet trailing helplessly behind...

Heed the scent of the pork.

By Popular Demand: The Human Flesh Story

The title says it all, really.

I used to go to Mexico once or twice a year, until I found out I could go to Europe and have people be rude to me for only three times the expense. On one visit, I was in Chiapas, near San Christobel de las Casas, and found a place that gave horseback tours to some of the smaller villages. They took us thru all this wild mountain scenery to a village that was in the middle of it's annual pagan festival - I kid you not, the people of the town were still worshiping in the traditional fashion, and they had gutted the local colonial-era church, painted it all kinds of wild drug-trip colors, and held ceremonies there. Cameras totally forbidden in the church. It was amazing, even without being hot and saddle-sore from the ride.

I took a break on a hillside near the cemetery - you could take pictures there - and two little boys came up to me, mugging and goofing for the camera, with those incredible, angelic, trusting faces that you only see on country kids. They must have been five or six years old. I fell instantly, utterly in love with them. As soon as I took a picture, they stuck out their hands and demanded payment. Ambitious little guys.

We rode back to San Christobel - more great scenery - and by the time I got there I was in serious pain. A, I hadn't done a lot of riding in a loooong time, and B, the saddles were basically wood with a stretched leather cover. So riding, for any length of time, was just - frankly, every jolt of the horse was like being rapped sharply on the ass with a frying pan. I feared I might never sit down again.

When I got back to town, I was sweaty, stiff, and tired. And ravenous. I found the nearest cafe and stumbled in, glancing at the menu on the chalkboard. I saw something that looked reasonable - "Milenesa de something something" - and thought, that'll be good. I couldn't remember for the life of me what the second word, the one that actually id'd the meat, was, but I knew that Milenesa always means "breaded and fried" and what's not to like there? I'd figure out the previous owner's mode of being when it came to the table.

But I NEVER DID.

It was a white meat, I can tell you that. Fairly mild. Didn't taste like chicken. Probably the only thing in the world that doesn't. Not quite pork...I tried to catch my waiter's eye, to ask him what this thing I was wolfing down was (I was too hungry not to eat it), but he was behind the bar, studiously ignoring me. Apparently menu translation was not included in the price. Possibly, too, he was avoiding me because I reeked of horse, and kept shifting my weight from one buttock to the other.

I ate it. I paid. I went back to my room, got out my spanish dictionary and searched for that word while laying butt-up on the bed, poring thru the pages...

No luck.

So, if I ever develop a crazed desire for the taste of human flesh.... I'll know where it came from.