Ain't chicken.

A good end to a bad week: Husband working late. Won't be home for supper. That means I get to have pork chops! Yum.

A bad beginning to a busy day: NPR's Morning Edition. I end up driving down the West Loop with tears streaming across my face, listening to Andrea Bernstein read from various transcripts released today of calls from in and around the World Trade Centers on September 11, 2001.

What got to me was this incredible woman, the manager of the restaurant at the top of one of the towers, making repeated calls asking for direction - this woman was so incredibly doing her job , having no idea of her reality - What's the safest route to send her customers and staff? What quadrant should she direct them to because the closest stairways were filled with smoke? What sent me beyond tears to choking grief was her asking - Was it ok to break a window because they were running out of fresh air? WAS IT OK TO BREAK A WINDOW????? I didn't cry watching those towers fall - it was too shocking - but this was more than I could stand.

Happy Labor Day Weekend. If you're alive to read this, please take a moment to think about how damned lucky you are.

This is the dilemma: Your husband's best friend is getting married.
You get the invitation in the mail.
There's a typo.
Do you tell them?
Do you assume someone else already has told them and pretend you didn't notice even when they know you two are the type who would notice?
Do you just ignore it?
If you're the type of people who would notice it, can you ignore it?

Let me preface this by saying I am neither a Democrat* nor a Republican, and my strongest opinion about Ronald Reagan may be that, well**, he did oversee the tearing down of 'that wall'.

John Hinckley Wants Out
The president’s daughter says ‘who cares’?

I say: You go, Patti.

Here, Patti states her opinion of the man who tried to kill her father and his need for "more freedom in order to get well".

*Regardless of what my husband says.
**No pun intended but sometimes I can't help myself.

Trivia Question:

What's the first thing you know?

Now, when you see the answer to this, you're going to do one of two things:

1. You're going to think 'Well, yeah, of course!' and do sort of an internal chuckle.
-or-
2. You're going to groan audibly and think 'Oh man, that is so lame'.

Just so you can learn a key fact about my personality, you should know that when I found out the answer, I not only thought 'Well, yeah, of course!', but I actually laughed out loud.

Now think about this for a minute - I mean really think about this and see if you can come up with the answer on your own.

If you give up, scroll down the page and look on the side bar to the left and it's there. I want to know if you are a laugher or a groaner.

So I'm reading all these reports about this wonder molecule in red wine that will magically extend your life span. Of course, I can't drink red wine without puking my guts out so I guess I'm doomed. But at least I have enough pride not to run for governor of California. Bwaaahahahahaha.

I want to be on The Pier with a rum runner...drink enough of those and you'll think you are the governor or California. Or at least of Lake Austin. I've been to both and I can tell you, Lake Austin is a much nicer place.

Oh, by the way, have you heard of The Shrub's latest? His 'Healthy Forest' initiative? Also known as "Leave No Tree Behind".

Lending truth to the notion that accident can be the mother of invention:

If I were to say I have a hobby other than sleeping, it would be breaking glass - stained glass. I have a power tool that I use to work with the glass - it's a wet grinder. Basically it's a water basin with a grinding wheel that sticks up from it, with a sponge that keeps the wheel wet when in use and the wheel is turned with electricity. Yesterday, while using the grinder to smooth the edge of a piece of glass that didn't break quite right, the fingernail of my middle right finger got a little too close to the wheel and ended up with a little half-moon shape ground in the tip. I went and dug up an emery board and shortened and smoothed the rest of the nail.

Today, I needed to do a whole manicure so all my nails would be the same length (and because they were just getting too darned long). Brain thought ....hmm....sit here with clippers and emery board for 30-40 minutes and end up with nail dust all over me and clippings to dispose of, ooooooooor.....use the power tool!!!!!!! Well, by the 8th nail it started to smell a little bit like burnt hair, but that went away quickly and I got my manicure in about 10 minutes (with a little emery board touch up). Fastest every, and I got to use a power tool in the process! I'll never go back to manual again!

I wonder if I could get this to work on the dogs....

I don't know the truth of what happened in the Colorado hotel room between that Kobe boy and that woman, and no one else does, either - except for the two of them. But I do know three things:

1. There are a lot of illiterate people out there in the world and somehow, they all have access to writing paper and stamps.

2. The woman who wrote this letter is obviously an idiot, but she is more right than she knows in one instance. Whatever did actually happen that night, it certainly was consequential.

3. Reading your mail may be the most interesting and amusing thing about being a judge.

Austin Report:

Kerby Lane – Get the chicken enchiladas and you’ll want to go to Austin all the time just for the food. Don’t chat with the busboy. He’ll think you want to be his friend.

Magnolia’s – Damned cute waiter. I’d do him. Actually, he looked really familiar. Maybe I did do him.

Bookpeople – Excellent place to hang in the air conditioning. If your brother is there, turn your cell phone off before you try to pee. Children’s department made me wish I was three feet tall again.

Congress Street Bridge Bats – The bats were late. The bats were sparse. Under whelmed.

Innerspace Caverns – Liked is last time, liked it again. Strange to sweat so much and be so cool at the same time. Tour guide Bonnie from Arkansas. It was her last tour – she’s going back to school – and her absence will be felt. She was great.

The Pier – The best. Love everything about it, from the twisting narrow road you drive down to get to it, to the great hamburgers and oh yeah – all those Rum Runners! Mars came up in the east and my brother kept trying to make me look at it but he had his old Soviet binoculars that you have to focus each eye separately on and I couldn’t get the hang of it so I just sat there drinking instead. The moon came up in the northeast and hung just above the trees, so huge it felt like you could reach out and touch it. Big and yellow and pitted – and no it wasn’t the booze. It was the moon, silly.

Strangest Thing I Noticed – Austin is a self-segregated town. We were in SoCo, Downtown, Georgetown & Town Lake, and after about 24 hours I started thinking – this is just a bunch of white people! I did see two black people driving a car in downtown when we were leaving, but they looked lost. Very strange experience, coming from Houston, where white people are often a minority unless you’re in River Oaks.

Nicest Surprise of the Trip – Lisa is a great person to take on a road trip. Not really terribly surprising because she’s just a great person, but nice to have it confirmed since Husband refuses to drive the Pan-American highway to the bottom of Chili with me. Oh, Liiiiisaaaaaaaa…..

Yet another reason to be happy about living in Texas:

As I learned today from watching the network stations on the tube talking about the power loss in the North and Northeast, Texas has it's very own personal power grid, separate from the Eastern Power Grid and the Western Power Grid. I guess that makes sense. It would be hard to secede without our own power grid.

Off to Austin to visit Prodigal Brother tomorrow. I bet that, considering that Austin has air conditioning and Manhatten does not, he's glad he moved! Dragging Lisa along instead of the dog this time so we will have a greater number of restaurant choices available. I think most every restaurant will let Lisa in.

Got a great price on hotel last time from Hotwire. Tried Priceline this time. Nicer hotel (for slightly more money) (once again, taking Lisa instead of Jake) and as long as they have our reservation when we get there, I'll be happy!

Another note on the power loss: If I were one of the untold millions who is without power tonight and I had a generator or a battery operated TV and I was watching one of the networks, I'd be incredibly pissed that all they're talking about is NYC as if it were the only place sweltering.

Traffic Rules I Never Heard Of:

1. There are three lanes: a left turn lane that has a little curb separating it from the other two lanes and with it's own left turn light with a green arrow pointing...left, and then two lanes to the right of the *obviously* left turn lane, and those two lanes each have their own light, regular round ones, and there is no painting on the ground indicating that the middle lane can do anything other than go straight, what the hell makes you think you can turn it into a left turn lane? Especially when it's light doesn't turn green when the left turn lane's little green arrow comes on???? You just ran a red light, shit-for-brains.

2. Once again, there are three lanes: a left turn lane with the curb and the arrow, and then two other lanes to the right. If you're in the far right lane, and the traffic in the left turn lane is backed up behind where you are, what the hell makes you think you can put on your blinker (ok, you get credit for using the correct one at least) and cut across the middle lane and barely stick the front fender of your big old stupid van inbetween two cars that waited in line to turn left, all the while blocking the middle lane in the process?

These are two examples of why I don't carry a gun.

"The human head is of the same approximate size and weight as a roaster chicken."

A little light summer reading.

As one who's mother gifted her body to a medical school upon her death many years ago, I can tell you - it's a lot easier on the dead lady than the living children. Not saying don't do it, but just don't think of it as doing a favor to the kids by saving them the cost of a big funeral, ok?

Overheard today at my local Barnes & Noble:

Two women standing in the aisle in front of the yoga and fitness books. First woman hands Second woman something titled "Creative Whack Pack".

First Woman: This has been recommended to me by a number of people. What do you think?

Second Woman: (reads box) Well, if you're into being motivated, it might be a good thing.

First Woman: Well, I'm into being motivated!

Second Woman: That's a lie. I've known you for almost 40 years and I've never known you to be motivated to do anything.

What happens when you strap a long metal CB antenna to the head of a Sheltie and send it out to the backyard in the middle of a really big, bright, nasty, booming lightning storm??

Thanks to my husband's complete lack of a sense of adventure, (not to mention misguided affection for the afore mentioned Barking Barking He's A Barking Machine dog), we'll never know.

Now, don't you feel cheated???

So I'm reading this story online about a couple who's marriage was endangered because the She did the nasty with a He who wasn't the Husband, and the She wrote about it online in a blog.

Not her regular blog that the Husband knew about, but what she thought of as an anonymous blog that he didn't know about. Well, one day the Husband is on the She's computer and for whatever reason reads the net cache, sees the URL for the allegedly anonymous blog, goes and reads all about the She's extra curricular activities and - shockingly - is all upset!

Now this is all standard and tawdry internet fare. Happily, they 'worked their way through it' and were able to save their marriage. The AMAZING thing about the story is the lesson they say they have learned. I thought, oh good! they've learned "Don't fuck around on your spouse". But noooooooo......

I quote:

Alex and Johanna have mended ways and learned a lesson: "We clear the Internet cache after we talk online."

A quick thank you to two ladies who have, in the last couple of years, become two of my favorite people.

To Lisa - thank you for coining a new phrase last night to describe indescribably horrid people: "Grown in a vat."

To Mel - thank you for honoring me by letting me share with you the incredible joy and excitement of your New Furniture being delivered to your New I-Bought-It-Myself-Before-I-Was-Thirty Home, and being the first to Sit on It and Drink til 3:00 a.m.

Great friends: Priceless