A Salty Piece of the Land Tour, 2005

Today's the day! I'm ditching work and taking off with a gaggle of girlfriends this afternoon to see my man, Jimmy B. Great music, good friends, sunshine and a cold Corona with a fresh lime is exactly what this girl needs!

PIRATE LOOKS AT FORTY
Mother, mother ocean,
I have heard you call,
Wanted to sail upon your waters
since I was three feet tall.
You've seen it all, you've seen it all.

Watch the men who rode you,
Switch from sails to steam.
And in your belly you hold the treasure
that few have ever seen, most of them dreams,
Most of them dreams.

Yes, I am a pirate two hundred years too late.
The cannons don't thunder there's nothin' to plunder
I'm an over forty victim of fate
Arriving too late, arriving too late.

I've done a bit of smugglin'
I've run my share of grass.
I made enough money to buy Miami,
But I pissed it away so fast,
Never meant to last, never meant to last.

I have been drunk now for over two weeks,
I passed out and I rallied and I sprung a few leaks,
But I've got to stop wishin',
Got to go fishin', I'm down to rock bottom again.
Just a few friends, just a few friends.

I go for younger women, lived with several awhile
And though I ran away, they'll come back one day.
And still could manage a smile
It just takes awhile, just takes awhile.

Mother, mother ocean, after all these years I've found
My occupational hazard being my occupation's just not around.
I feel like I've drowned,
Gonna head uptown.

Home sweet home

After much inner turmoil and indecisiveness, I've finally made a housing decision. I will put off buying for at least a year, and I've put down a deposit on an apartment "home" on the north side of Indy. Interestingly enough, after many months of being in housing limbo, everything this past week has fallen neatly into place, as if it were just meant to be.

I knew what area I wanted to live in, and I knew what I was looking for in a home. However, I also knew that I would be stretching my budget in order to be able to afford the kind of home I wanted, not that I am being extravagant or unrealistic. I am simply just too practical to put myself in a perpetually financially stressful situation or to settle for something less than what I want on such an important investment. So I started looking at condos. I found many that I liked but have been hesitant about purchasing a condo. What if I want to sell in in two years and buy a home? What if I can't sell it?

And there were several other considerations floating around in my head, contributing to my indecisiveness - saving for a better down payment, maintenance costs, furnishing a home, and the time it would take to find a home, make an offer, close, etc. As much as I love my parents and appreciate their generosity in letting me stay with them this summer, I am anxious to be back out on my own. The commute alone has become a real pain in the ass, not to mention a huge waste of gas and time.

At any rate, it seems logical for me to put off the buying process. Last week, I found the perfect apartment community right around the area where I was looking to live. The apartments are more like condominiums - large, open rooms, attached garages, fireplaces, and large patios. Plus, I was able to get an end unit with quite a bit of yard around the side for Milo and lots of landscaping and trees. And surprisingly, the rent is not completely outrageous.

It's been a long while since I had my "own" place, and I can't begin to tell you how much I'm looking forward to having that independence back again.

Confession

I prefer to drive in the left lane whenever possible.

Go ahead and hate me.

Get what done?

I don't care for the phrase "get 'er done!" Not that I don't find lots of humor in jokes about mullets, trashy women, trailer parks and pick up trucks, or road kill that bites off your nipple - I do. I grew up next to a family that defines "hillbilly" in every possible way. The brothers were named Joe Buck and Buzz, the father was a spitting image of Hank Williams, Jr., the mother carried her oxygen tank in one hand and a lit cigarett in the other, the truck bed in the front yard filled was filled with empty beer cans, the kitchen always had Ho-Ho's and hot dogs, and there were always a couple of hound dogs underfoot. I was close friends with the daughter, who surprisingly never became the topless dancer her family thought she could be, and we laughed at the madness all the time.

Anyhow, "get 'er done" just makes me kind of cringe.

Ron White, on the other hand, is one funny dude.

Goody Two Shoes

This is a great Slate editorial about Supreme Court nominee John Roberts by Dahlia Lithwick. The editorial has some great links, so go there and check it out. Here's a bit of the intro to get you started:

One fun game that Supreme Court reporters like to play when they're out on maternity leave is called "Who Smoked Pot," in which one speculates about which, if any, of the current Supreme Court justices at some point in the very distant past availed themselves of the opportunity to take a little toke out behind the barn. Some of the justices are easy: William Rehnquist would have lectured his roommates for getting high, and Antonin Scalia would have gone one step further and narked on them. David Souter can never have known anyone capable of procuring anything stronger than ginger ale for him. Which is why my money would be on Stephen Breyer—but only if he mistook a joint for a celery boat or something.

I am enormously confident, however, that John Roberts has never smoked pot. And I know this because I knew guys like him in college and at law school; we all knew guys like him. These were the guys who were certain, by age 19, that they couldn't smoke pot, or date trampy girls, or throw up off the top of the school clock tower because it would impair their confirmation chances. They would have done all these things, but for the possibility of being carved out of the history books for it.

Check out the rest of the piece here. So who is the most trustworthy? Someone who freely admits to smoking dope, someone who admits smoking dope but claims he didn't inhale, or someone who lived a sqeaky-clean life in hopes of a political confirmation?

Busted

I got busted out by a very handsome police officer while moving through this morning's rush hour at a snail's pace. I was eating a graham cracker, talking to my mother on the phone (hands-free), and looking at the front page of the daily paper with one eye while keeping my other eye on the car in front of me. Officer Friendly pulled up next to me and gave me the hard stare and motioned at the newspaper perched on my steering wheel. I smiled sweetly at him and put the paper down.

Had he pulled me over for a reprimand, I would have explained to him that I've gotten very good at multi-tasking in my vehicle ever since I rear-ended someone last year.

Am I wrong?

Isn't it common courtesy to leave an empty stall between each occupied stall in any bathroom if there is a sufficient number of stalls permitting this?

I thought everyone knew this unwritten rule.

Kill Reality, but not blogging!

I miss blogging! I really, really do! This temporary posting hiatus has me all bottled up with random and mostly pointless thoughts. Unfortunately, there are simply not enough hours in my day, and I've already cut back on sleeping and shaving my legs every damn day.

Anyhow, my excuses this time include long work hours, a daily three-hour commute during the worst possible times to be in traffic, a new work-out schedule that I've been surprisingly faithful to, and a broken-down laptop. The fact that I can't pop up my laptop at the end of the day while watching The Daily Show from the middle of my bed has seriously hampered all things internet. If I want to use my parents' computer at night, my thoughts typically have to compete with my sweet but hearing-impaired father's need to listen to the Weather Channel at full blast. At any rate, I know that I'll be back online on a regular basis as soon as I get my computer up and running again and once I move back down to Indy. And both should be happening soon enough.

I can tell you this, though: You've not missed much goings-on in my life. I promise. In addition to blogging, most everything else in my life has been on temporary hold lately except for work, which is moving along at a light-speed pace while I frantically try to keep up with the program. I think some people around here have mistaken me for a real attorney.

I did, however, catch the newest episode of Kill Reality a couple of nights ago. Clearly, I love this show, mostly because it is ridiculously stupid. I'm sure that I am one of only about 8 people hanging on to every new episode, but this week's show gave me renewed incentive to keep watching the trainwreck. Tonya from The Real World and Johnny Fairplay from Survivor have a screwed up sex thing going on, and now she apparently loves him. It's great. She's a complete basket case, he's totally wacked, and I'm highly entertained. What can I say...

Life is good.