My long term battle with my hair is well documented.
At this point, we've sort of come to an impasse - I don't like it, it doesn't like me, and we've accepted that fact. There was a bit of a scuffle very early in January, when it refused to conform to anything remotely professional looking and I responded by cutting it all off to within an inch of my scalp. But that was resolved pretty squarely in favor of the hair, when I got the pictures back from my January visit to Austin and I looked like the world's most confused and drunken escaped mental patient in every single photo.
But lately I've just let the hair do its growing thing, and it's been perfectly happy to just there lie like a bushy mass on my head. Part of this hair indifference included letting semi-professional hair people do pretty much whatever they wanted to it for the first quarter of the year. When Jordan went to cosmetology school for a month and needed a hair dying model person, I volunteered my unruly mop for a coloring. And then the next month when his friend David needed a model as well, I signed up for a second coating without a thought.
People kept just politely nodding their heads and secretly rolling their eyes when I said that I really didn't care what my hair looked like, but I quite literally meant it. I would still attempt to tame it into something respectable on the off chance that it might finally have given up the battle, but I had truly decided to make a concerted effort not to put too much stock in how my hair reflected my worth as a human being.
And omigosh, it's so great. I realize now that the difference between great hair and normal hair is so much wider than the difference between normal hair and bad hair. And that the difference between bad hair and truly horrible hair is the widest gap of all. Or more plainly - there's pretty much nothing I can do to my head to get out of the normal-bad range, and no one in the world is going to care one way or the other.
So now I go with all out non-caring - I wash my hair in the morning, towel it dry, and then run my hands through it until it's roughly flat on my head. And then I don't mess with it for the rest of the day. Except on occasions when I'm in the privacy of my own home and I wear a headband to keep the hair out of my eyes, as previously disclosed. It's so awesome. And functional.
Plus, it doesn't look that terrible.
Okay, maybe I do look like I've wandered straight out of an 80's movie, what with the feathered nature of how it now falls. And sure, it's gone from 'mildly bushy' to 'so bushy that it brushes the ceiling of car when I get in' while rapidly approaching 'white boy afro' levels. And yes, I have grown out my sideburns down my chin, to offset the 80's look of the upper hair by doing a throwback to the mid 1920's. ...Wait, I forget exactly where this whole story was going.
Um, hair. Yes. Not caring is awesome. I never want to go to a barber ever again. We'll see how long I can hold out. We're currently somewhere around month three. I probably give it another three weeks, roughly, or until I can see my hair at all times in my field of vision. That's usually what causes me to snap. But maybe my willpower and self image have gone up so much lately that I'll be able to last for ages without caring what others think of my crazy 80's mane.
(Yeah, seriously, three weeks)
Wednesday, May 07, 2008
Tuesday, May 06, 2008
When Good Cars Go Bad
We all knew it had to happen eventually. My Car of Awesomeness (who is rapidly approaching his first anniversary with me) has started down the dark path that the Truck of Malfunction forged many, many years ago.
I know at first I was a little worried when, less than a month in, we had that brief period where the car was possessed by Satan. But that was resolved in general short order, and there had been no problems since. (Unless you count the fact that it burns through gas so fast that I can literally watch as the gas gauge goes down, which is slightly demoralizing in an age where one gallon of gas costs more than a 12 pack of Coke. But let's not get into that.)
Then, about two months ago I started to notice that my left front tire was a little flat. Almost imperceptibly, but as time went on, it definitely got flatter. So I ran by a gas station, filled it back up, and fully intended to go get it checked out at the tire place.
But time passed and I grew complacent. It wasn't actually getting any flatter anymore, it was just one of those things. And then when it did start to get noticeably flat, I ignored the problem until my car actually started to pull towards the left. And again, I simply filled the tire with air rather than going to the store.
What can I say? I was young. And foolish. And the tire place was totally like at least seven miles up the road.
Okay, so maybe the car isn't so much heading down the TOM path of destruction so much as my own carefully crafted path of willful ignorance, but follow along, it's an exciting story.
----------------------
All of this rising action and foreshadowing leads us up to last weekend when I am supposed to drive out into deep East Texas for my Mom's family birthday lunch. As is our family tradition, the diaspora of our clan is temporarily put on hold, as we return together for a single meal on each member's date of birth. Usually held at a delightfully colorful theme restaurant.
We decide to shoot for a late afternoon meal, as going to church Sunday mornings always adds an extra element of complexity to the proceedings. I head out from Dallas just at 12:00 so I should arrive roughly at 2:30-2:45, with some spare room for traffic to make the 3:00 meeting time. I once again notice that my tire is looking a touch low, and thus do a quick fill up before I embark. (Note: this would be the third fill up of its kind in under 2 months. Lord knows I never was called the brightest bulb in the box.)
Things go great as the trip begins. Traffic is super light, I have both the new Hush Sound album and a copy of the latest offering from The National to obsess over/dance around to all the way up there.
Now the trip from Dallas to Longview is a relatively simple one. There is only one highway involved, and it is basically a straight horizontal line connecting the two cities. The only thing of note about the drive is that there is pretty much nothing in between the two places, besides a plethora of empty or cow-ridden fields. There is one city about 30 minutes outside the Metroplex, then the turn off for the only other mid size city (Tyler) and then nothing for upwards of 80 miles.
So of course, my tire chooses the dead center of this Nothing Span in which to completely blow out. I actually had about 15 seconds of warning about this, luckily, as my car started making a peculiar *Wwhoomp* *Wwhoomp* sort of noise as a precursor to becoming completely undrivable. This causes me to slow from 75 to 65 mph, which is probably the only thing that saved me from untimely death, as I still nearly careened straight off the road I was on and into a nearby creek. Instead, I slam on my breaks and am able to instead just crazy swerve my way over to the side of the road, minus a large portion of my tire.
After a couple of fun moments of hyperventilating, personal body checking to make sure all limbs were still intact, and nervous laughing, I make my way out of the car to survey the damage.
I pull out the jack and spend an agonizingly long period of time lying on the ground trying to find the lip of the car body that I'm supposed to brace it against. Then I spend an even longer time lying on the ground attempting to figure out how to pump up the jack using only this coat hanger-like apparatus that was packed in alongside it. Once I get the car up in the air and the old tire off, I'm able to see just how bad a blowout it was - nearly a 5 inch hole on the interior wall of the tire. It looks like the exit wound of a particularly nasty shotgun blast. I have a brief fever dream while lying on the side of the busy highway of an armed robbery gone bad in the interior of my left front tire - their last job before they were going to go straight too - until I shake myself out of it and get the little tiny spare tire attached to the car.
I'm wildly impressed with my tire changing abilities (which, yeah, I probably shouldn't be, but come on. Show of hands, how many of you would think I could change a tire under my own power without dropping a car on my head?) but now face the fact that I'm going to have to drive at least 60 miles in any one direction before I'm going to find civilization advanced enough to help me get off this Baby's First Tire that I've got going on.
Getting up to 60 mphs is an epic feat and strain for my car at this point, so we stick with about 55 mph, all the while wheezing down the highway as we are passed by 18 wheelers, uHauls, and even old people driving those giant camper houses on wheels, with dumb names like The Summer Breeze, or The Elegant Pelican. I'm thoroughly humiliated for my fancy luxury sedan, but at least it's still operational and we aren't in a sort of Deliverance/Wrong Turn situation where I'm forced to go wandering through the woods for help.
I decide to just head for Longview, as it's probably the closest and biggest place that I can reach without dying, and make it there with little further issue, although minus a large portion of my dignity. I arrive at the restaurant and the hostess blanches at the sight of me, probably thinking that she's going to have to rush some bum out of her fancy establishment. Finally for once I have an excuse for getting this look, as I'm pretty much covered head to toe in gravel, brake dust, jack grease, and God knows what else.
Being pretty sure that there isn't a place that could help me at this point anyways, I enjoy a nice leisurely (if soot covered) dinner with my family, who has awesomely waited around for an extra hour and a half just for me, chowing down on chips and what have you while placing side bets on what sort of disaster had befallen me this time.
Afterwards I make the long journey home to Dallas on the Tire of Stunted Growth, and find that if you just come to accept the fact that everyone on Earth is going to angrily rush by you, usually while flipping you off, driving can be really quiet and relaxing. Almost therapeutic. I'm not sure that it was worth the extra 2 hours of transit time, but it wasn't as horrible as I anticipated.
Still, getting the bird from the elderly driver of The Regal Eagle? It sticks with you.
----------------------
The next day I was able to get two new front tires and a front end alignment (the real reason for the blowout, apparently, insomuch as my alignment was far enough off that the inside of the tire was getting worn down about 10 times faster than it should be) with almost no trouble, assuming I didn't mind mortgaging my first born against the costs. Seriously, owning a fancy car is cool and all, but who would have ever expected that an expensive car would have associated expensive repair and maintenance costs? That shit just comes out of nowhere.
So to recap - stupidity and lack of CONSTANT VIGILANCE against potential car problems causes tire explosion and near death of the driver, but plucky ingenuity saves the day over said stupidity and everyone survives, just minus all their disposable income for the month.
Oh, and the bastards at the tire place totally lost one of my lug nuts on the tire they replaced. Which will take them as long to fix as it is taking the city to repair my gas at home. (Meaning they'll both be in place sometime around my 40th birthday.)
Woo and hoo.
I know at first I was a little worried when, less than a month in, we had that brief period where the car was possessed by Satan. But that was resolved in general short order, and there had been no problems since. (Unless you count the fact that it burns through gas so fast that I can literally watch as the gas gauge goes down, which is slightly demoralizing in an age where one gallon of gas costs more than a 12 pack of Coke. But let's not get into that.)
Then, about two months ago I started to notice that my left front tire was a little flat. Almost imperceptibly, but as time went on, it definitely got flatter. So I ran by a gas station, filled it back up, and fully intended to go get it checked out at the tire place.
But time passed and I grew complacent. It wasn't actually getting any flatter anymore, it was just one of those things. And then when it did start to get noticeably flat, I ignored the problem until my car actually started to pull towards the left. And again, I simply filled the tire with air rather than going to the store.
What can I say? I was young. And foolish. And the tire place was totally like at least seven miles up the road.
Okay, so maybe the car isn't so much heading down the TOM path of destruction so much as my own carefully crafted path of willful ignorance, but follow along, it's an exciting story.
----------------------
All of this rising action and foreshadowing leads us up to last weekend when I am supposed to drive out into deep East Texas for my Mom's family birthday lunch. As is our family tradition, the diaspora of our clan is temporarily put on hold, as we return together for a single meal on each member's date of birth. Usually held at a delightfully colorful theme restaurant.
We decide to shoot for a late afternoon meal, as going to church Sunday mornings always adds an extra element of complexity to the proceedings. I head out from Dallas just at 12:00 so I should arrive roughly at 2:30-2:45, with some spare room for traffic to make the 3:00 meeting time. I once again notice that my tire is looking a touch low, and thus do a quick fill up before I embark. (Note: this would be the third fill up of its kind in under 2 months. Lord knows I never was called the brightest bulb in the box.)
Things go great as the trip begins. Traffic is super light, I have both the new Hush Sound album and a copy of the latest offering from The National to obsess over/dance around to all the way up there.
Now the trip from Dallas to Longview is a relatively simple one. There is only one highway involved, and it is basically a straight horizontal line connecting the two cities. The only thing of note about the drive is that there is pretty much nothing in between the two places, besides a plethora of empty or cow-ridden fields. There is one city about 30 minutes outside the Metroplex, then the turn off for the only other mid size city (Tyler) and then nothing for upwards of 80 miles.
So of course, my tire chooses the dead center of this Nothing Span in which to completely blow out. I actually had about 15 seconds of warning about this, luckily, as my car started making a peculiar *Wwhoomp* *Wwhoomp* sort of noise as a precursor to becoming completely undrivable. This causes me to slow from 75 to 65 mph, which is probably the only thing that saved me from untimely death, as I still nearly careened straight off the road I was on and into a nearby creek. Instead, I slam on my breaks and am able to instead just crazy swerve my way over to the side of the road, minus a large portion of my tire.
After a couple of fun moments of hyperventilating, personal body checking to make sure all limbs were still intact, and nervous laughing, I make my way out of the car to survey the damage.
I pull out the jack and spend an agonizingly long period of time lying on the ground trying to find the lip of the car body that I'm supposed to brace it against. Then I spend an even longer time lying on the ground attempting to figure out how to pump up the jack using only this coat hanger-like apparatus that was packed in alongside it. Once I get the car up in the air and the old tire off, I'm able to see just how bad a blowout it was - nearly a 5 inch hole on the interior wall of the tire. It looks like the exit wound of a particularly nasty shotgun blast. I have a brief fever dream while lying on the side of the busy highway of an armed robbery gone bad in the interior of my left front tire - their last job before they were going to go straight too - until I shake myself out of it and get the little tiny spare tire attached to the car.
I'm wildly impressed with my tire changing abilities (which, yeah, I probably shouldn't be, but come on. Show of hands, how many of you would think I could change a tire under my own power without dropping a car on my head?) but now face the fact that I'm going to have to drive at least 60 miles in any one direction before I'm going to find civilization advanced enough to help me get off this Baby's First Tire that I've got going on.
Getting up to 60 mphs is an epic feat and strain for my car at this point, so we stick with about 55 mph, all the while wheezing down the highway as we are passed by 18 wheelers, uHauls, and even old people driving those giant camper houses on wheels, with dumb names like The Summer Breeze, or The Elegant Pelican. I'm thoroughly humiliated for my fancy luxury sedan, but at least it's still operational and we aren't in a sort of Deliverance/Wrong Turn situation where I'm forced to go wandering through the woods for help.
I decide to just head for Longview, as it's probably the closest and biggest place that I can reach without dying, and make it there with little further issue, although minus a large portion of my dignity. I arrive at the restaurant and the hostess blanches at the sight of me, probably thinking that she's going to have to rush some bum out of her fancy establishment. Finally for once I have an excuse for getting this look, as I'm pretty much covered head to toe in gravel, brake dust, jack grease, and God knows what else.
Being pretty sure that there isn't a place that could help me at this point anyways, I enjoy a nice leisurely (if soot covered) dinner with my family, who has awesomely waited around for an extra hour and a half just for me, chowing down on chips and what have you while placing side bets on what sort of disaster had befallen me this time.
Afterwards I make the long journey home to Dallas on the Tire of Stunted Growth, and find that if you just come to accept the fact that everyone on Earth is going to angrily rush by you, usually while flipping you off, driving can be really quiet and relaxing. Almost therapeutic. I'm not sure that it was worth the extra 2 hours of transit time, but it wasn't as horrible as I anticipated.
Still, getting the bird from the elderly driver of The Regal Eagle? It sticks with you.
----------------------
The next day I was able to get two new front tires and a front end alignment (the real reason for the blowout, apparently, insomuch as my alignment was far enough off that the inside of the tire was getting worn down about 10 times faster than it should be) with almost no trouble, assuming I didn't mind mortgaging my first born against the costs. Seriously, owning a fancy car is cool and all, but who would have ever expected that an expensive car would have associated expensive repair and maintenance costs? That shit just comes out of nowhere.
So to recap - stupidity and lack of CONSTANT VIGILANCE against potential car problems causes tire explosion and near death of the driver, but plucky ingenuity saves the day over said stupidity and everyone survives, just minus all their disposable income for the month.
Oh, and the bastards at the tire place totally lost one of my lug nuts on the tire they replaced. Which will take them as long to fix as it is taking the city to repair my gas at home. (Meaning they'll both be in place sometime around my 40th birthday.)
Woo and hoo.
Monday, May 05, 2008
A Primitive Lifestyle
About 5 weeks ago, I came home after work and really wanted some cookies. Because I am incredibly handy around the kitchen like that, I set out to whip up a batch from scratch. And by scratch, I mean I added an egg to the Betty Crocker pre-made cookie mix and then spooned the results on to a cookie sheet. I tossed the sheet into the oven and set the timer for 13 minutes, practically drooling in anticipation.
When the alarm (finally) went off, I shook myself out of my cookie-lustful stupor, wiped my chin, and wandered back into the kitchen, expecting shortly to be able to stuff my mouth full of warm chocolaty goodness. Except upon inspection the cookie dough was in the exact same condition as when I put it in the oven.
"Fool!" I thought. "In your haste you forgot to preheat the oven. Now you will have to wait another 15 minutes before you can gorge yourself." I was very sad.
Until I looked over and realized that I had set the oven, it just wasn't getting hot.
This sounds way less ominous than it should, but right at this second you should hear the soundtrack that accompanies my life rise in dreadful anticipation of a horrible reveal.
Because while it may look like just a lack of cookie-making power one night, this one event was the foreshadowing of oh so much doom to come.
----------------------
We fast-forward to today, where I am still unable to cook anything. Because the city has shut off our gas. And by the current rate of things, they plan on never turning it back on.
----------------------
I feel like I already discussed my problem from a couple of months ago, where my hot water heater kept abruptly refusing to heat any water. Most commonly whenever I was actually in the shower, mid-way through the chorus of George Michael's Faith. But just in case I haven't - the boiler for my condo complex kept repeatedly failing over the course of several weeks. After (futilely) replacing the heating coils multiple times, the HOA board realized that it was actually a problem with the natural gas line going to the boiler. They put an above ground gas line directly to the heater while the real line was fixed, and everything seemed peachy.
That was until the moment 5 weeks ago when the gas line repair company came in and did the test to check the new line. Which indicated that there were at least two, possibly as many as four, huge gas leaks in the overall existing system in our complex, not just the one going to the water heater. And huge is sort of an understatement - according to one workman, had one of these leaks actually ignited it could have easily taken out our entire block.
My faith in urban safety now completely undermined, the city shut down the gas and has been systematically replacing the whole setup. Which apparently takes the entire length and breadth of time itself, as we are now approaching day 40 without the hint of gas. Do you know what sort of primitive lifestyle one must lead if you have a gas range stove with no gas to power it? Lemme tell you, it is not pretty.
Mostly it involves foraging in the wild (read: eating fast food for every meal), or subjecting yourself to eating radioactive matter (anything zapped in the microwave for extended periods of time). I have easily gained 10 pounds of weight, mostly in the form of french fries, which have directly applied themselves to line my torso, or in tiny microwaved hamburgers, which I feel go straight to my thighs.
Had I expected this little gas siege to last the rest of time, I might have sped up the plan that I put into motion over this weekend: buying an electric skillet to offset this new, even more wildly unhealthy lifestyle that has been thrust upon me. Unfortunately, my taste in skillets runs very cheap, as I'm already poor from the never ending eating out and the surprising expense of pre-made microwavable meals. So the skillet I ended up purchasing tends to only heat things in a very specific manner. Namely: Poorly, most kindly described as 'wildly uneven.'
Thus, to the two other food options we add a third: preservative-laden fast food, radioactive frozen meals, and alternatingly raw and burnt self-prepared delicacies. And not even I will buy the idea that something half raw and half totally blackened actually averages out to properly cooked. I'm a forager, not an idiot.
So still, we are left eating basically hand to mouth, wandering the streets looking for food made by others, all the while wondering if someday they will ever give us back the power to sustain ourselves on our own. And if so, will that day will arrive before I reach the weight of a killer whale, can no longer move under my own power, and approach all problems from the couch while wielding a reaching broom?
The answer most definitely seems to be no, but I lie in wait nonetheless - my pre-made cookie mix at the ready, an egg sitting in the refrigerator, under glass affixed with the words "Break in case of emergency. Or the ability to bake cookies," next to a tiny little hammer.
Someday, my friends, someday.
When the alarm (finally) went off, I shook myself out of my cookie-lustful stupor, wiped my chin, and wandered back into the kitchen, expecting shortly to be able to stuff my mouth full of warm chocolaty goodness. Except upon inspection the cookie dough was in the exact same condition as when I put it in the oven.
"Fool!" I thought. "In your haste you forgot to preheat the oven. Now you will have to wait another 15 minutes before you can gorge yourself." I was very sad.
Until I looked over and realized that I had set the oven, it just wasn't getting hot.
This sounds way less ominous than it should, but right at this second you should hear the soundtrack that accompanies my life rise in dreadful anticipation of a horrible reveal.
Because while it may look like just a lack of cookie-making power one night, this one event was the foreshadowing of oh so much doom to come.
----------------------
We fast-forward to today, where I am still unable to cook anything. Because the city has shut off our gas. And by the current rate of things, they plan on never turning it back on.
----------------------
I feel like I already discussed my problem from a couple of months ago, where my hot water heater kept abruptly refusing to heat any water. Most commonly whenever I was actually in the shower, mid-way through the chorus of George Michael's Faith. But just in case I haven't - the boiler for my condo complex kept repeatedly failing over the course of several weeks. After (futilely) replacing the heating coils multiple times, the HOA board realized that it was actually a problem with the natural gas line going to the boiler. They put an above ground gas line directly to the heater while the real line was fixed, and everything seemed peachy.
That was until the moment 5 weeks ago when the gas line repair company came in and did the test to check the new line. Which indicated that there were at least two, possibly as many as four, huge gas leaks in the overall existing system in our complex, not just the one going to the water heater. And huge is sort of an understatement - according to one workman, had one of these leaks actually ignited it could have easily taken out our entire block.
My faith in urban safety now completely undermined, the city shut down the gas and has been systematically replacing the whole setup. Which apparently takes the entire length and breadth of time itself, as we are now approaching day 40 without the hint of gas. Do you know what sort of primitive lifestyle one must lead if you have a gas range stove with no gas to power it? Lemme tell you, it is not pretty.
Mostly it involves foraging in the wild (read: eating fast food for every meal), or subjecting yourself to eating radioactive matter (anything zapped in the microwave for extended periods of time). I have easily gained 10 pounds of weight, mostly in the form of french fries, which have directly applied themselves to line my torso, or in tiny microwaved hamburgers, which I feel go straight to my thighs.
Had I expected this little gas siege to last the rest of time, I might have sped up the plan that I put into motion over this weekend: buying an electric skillet to offset this new, even more wildly unhealthy lifestyle that has been thrust upon me. Unfortunately, my taste in skillets runs very cheap, as I'm already poor from the never ending eating out and the surprising expense of pre-made microwavable meals. So the skillet I ended up purchasing tends to only heat things in a very specific manner. Namely: Poorly, most kindly described as 'wildly uneven.'
Thus, to the two other food options we add a third: preservative-laden fast food, radioactive frozen meals, and alternatingly raw and burnt self-prepared delicacies. And not even I will buy the idea that something half raw and half totally blackened actually averages out to properly cooked. I'm a forager, not an idiot.
So still, we are left eating basically hand to mouth, wandering the streets looking for food made by others, all the while wondering if someday they will ever give us back the power to sustain ourselves on our own. And if so, will that day will arrive before I reach the weight of a killer whale, can no longer move under my own power, and approach all problems from the couch while wielding a reaching broom?
The answer most definitely seems to be no, but I lie in wait nonetheless - my pre-made cookie mix at the ready, an egg sitting in the refrigerator, under glass affixed with the words "Break in case of emergency. Or the ability to bake cookies," next to a tiny little hammer.
Someday, my friends, someday.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)