What the...?

A chair I bought at an antique mall fell apart last week. It wasn't a sudden falling apart, but rather a gradual loosening of glue that eventually resulted in a sadly unsturdy chair.

No problem, I decided. I can glue that back together in, like 15 minutes! Because I am Super Woman. Only, I didn't take into account the part where the whole chair needed to be disassembled, the parts that join needed to be cleaned and sanded down, and it would actually take the better part of an evening.

It occurred to me several times that I should change out of my skirt and into more appropriate work clothes while I repaired the chair. Several times, I disregarded this thought. So I sat, listened to the television, took the chair apart, and put it back together like a puzzle.

After finishing up, it was late, so I went upstairs to get ready for bed. I took off my skirt, but it seemed to be caught. I gave it a shake, thinking that the zipper had caught on my underpants. That didn't work, so I gave it another shake. Puzzled, I looked down to find that I had managed to glue my skirt to my underwear.

Next time that chair falls apart, I'm totally putting on jeans.

8 comments | link

Alas and alack

It's too bad. I was really looking forward to a presidential campaign that involved Christopher Walken. I envisioned him doing a lot of dancing and yelling, "More cowbell!" at his opponents. But it's not to be. It was all a hoax.

6 comments | link

The links that shape my week

Based on the number of links that have been sent to me over the past few days, I'm going to guess that the general productivity of most of my friends is on the low side. Not that I'm complaining, there's some good stuff out there. I will share select links with the rest of you:

• Those Fucking Austrian signs keep disappearing. (from Sarge)
• Making Fiends rules. (from Howdy)
• Christopher Walken is allegedly running for president. Would he be the creepiest president ever, or the raddest president ever? Both? (from Bonney)
• Christopher Walken is also rockin' the Fat Boy Slim video. (from Crystal and Duane)
• There are some crazy images out at Stencil Revolution. (from Kenna)

Now I have to get back to work. Only 12 work days left before I go away!

4 comments | link

Public Enemy #1

A loud and agressive honk sounded behind me as I pedaled my way home this afternoon. I looked around as the man in the Toyota passed me and could see no possible reason for the honking -- I was over in the parking lane, where there were no parked cars, and he had plenty of room to go around me -- so I flipped him off. He flipped me off back, which is the natural order of traffic altercations. I figured that would be the end of it.

But then he stopped in the middle of the street, about thirty yards ahead of me. There was no way I was going to go around him at this point, so I shouted to his angry reflection in the rear view mirror, "What, are you going to run me over now?"

"I ought to break that finger off, you dumb broad! This is for cars, not bikes!"

"Cars and bikes, asshole!" was my witty retort.

"Next time, I will run you over!" he shouted as he sped off, making an illegal turn.

"Nice, nice!" I shouted after him.

So there are a couple of things wrong with this scenario. The fact that it happened in the first place is obviously wrong, but my response is what really has me ticked off. I mean, "Cars and bikes, asshole?" What was I thinking? The appropriate response was obviously, "Did you just call me a dumb broad? Is it still 2005?"

Also, this reminds me of a Stephen Crane quote: "There was a lurid altercation during which they damned each others souls with frequence." It makes me wish I had said, "I damn your soul, sir!"

I had to giggle to myself, however, as I turned the corner and saw three more cyclists. He's going to have to run a whole lot of us over if he's going to clear the streets for cars.

11 comments | link

Spanish practice

Part of my reason for choosing to travel in Spain is to practice my Spanish. Given the fact that the world's opinion of the U.S. has plummeted in recent years, and the fact that I can't change my passport to a Canadian one before I go (unless Canadian Rebecca Campbell will go ahead and trade me already), I can't just pretend I'm Canadian the whole time. So I've been practicing the following sentence:

Yo vivo en los estados unidos, pero pienso que nuestro presidente es un bicho grande.

I particularly like how translate.dictionary.com translates "bicho grande" as "great tiny beast."

12 comments | link

Nose trauma

I think it's safe to say we've all had a song stuck in our heads before, but have you ever had a smell stuck in your nose? It's really disturbing. The times it's actually happened to me involved cleaning the bathroom with the kind of chemicals that would make Howdy post six long paragraphs about converting human waste into cleaning supplies. Or there was that time when I spilled nail polish remover all over the comforter that was on top of me, while simultaneously attempting to poison myself by cooking a pot lid, which had a plastic handle. I never could get the hang of which knob goes to which burner. Each of those times, I carried the smell in my nostrils for a few hours.

The chemical burns in my nose made some semblance of sense at least. But last night, I kept smelling milk. The Target parking lot smelled like milk. As I reorganized my linen closet, I smelled milk. I sniffed my shirt, thinking that perhaps it wasn't clean after all, and I'd spilled milk on it at some point in the past causing it to give off a milky odor. It smelled like Tide. I smelled my armpits, nothing. I smelled my leg because when I rode my bike to work, I splashed through a puddle in the morning and although it didn't look milky, it was outside a restaurant that caters to people with kids. But it just smelled leg-like.

"How the hell do you get a milk smell stuck in your nose?" I wondered. I felt my upper lip. Though I hadn't consumed anything with milk since my second bowl of cereal the day before and had showered since then, I thought maybe there was some milk crust stuck on my upper lip. I just couldn't figure it out. I resigned myself to the fact that I'd be smelling milk for the rest of the day at least. Possibly the rest of my life. Clearly, this would be a life tainted with the milky smell. A rose by any other name still smells like a baby's head, this was what I had to look forward to. I'd start to wear too much perfume just so I could smell something else, something other than milk. It occurred to me that those ladies with whom you always get stuck in the elevator, the ones who carry around toxic waste clouds of perfume to engulf you in an olfactory nightmare of doom, they probably just have a milk smell stuck in their noses. I actually pitied them for a moment.

In the end, it turned out that some storage tubs I purchased at Target, and into which I placed some of the contents of my overly-crowded linen closet for under-bed storage, actually gave off a bit of a milky smell.

And I breathed a deep, non-milky sigh of relief.

10 comments | link