Sunday, November 15, 2009
Saturday, May 2, 2009
David Sedaris and the Seizure Lizard
I am reading a David Sedaris book pretty much as we speak and it almost inspires me to write things down again, almost, totally. I read, I laugh, I think, mostly I think about the time I went to see/hear David speak in San Antonio a few years ago. I was so excited to go because if I went there was a great possibility of meeting him and making him my new best friend (along with Augusten Burroughs of course). So, my man friend at the time and I drove to SA, where we were a few minutes late, but I don't think David noticed, we were very respectful when entering the theatre, there was minimal toe stepping.
I was really into what David S. was saying, but mostly I could not stop thinking about what I was going to say to him when we finally met. I had to think of something good, something super catchy and smart so he would want to be best friends with me. I half listened to what he said, laughed at the appropriate times (just in case he saw me in the audience, I didn't want him to think I wasn't thoroughly amused by him). I kept saying lines and asking questions over and over in my head, giggling a little to myself, mentally patting myself on the back, I would win him over yet...the only problem was, that the main question that kept popping into my head was "did everything happen to David last week and yesterday?" He kept talking about all these things that happened to him last week and yesterday, for example, he went to the zoo and saw spider monkeys masturbating last week when he was in Boston..Ok, so that is the only example I can think of at the moment, but I know he mentioned things that happened yesterday or last week throughout the entire reading...nothing and I mean nothing happened five years ago...
Anyway, when David was finished speaking, we were invited to form a line to buy books and get autographs, etc. Normally, I would just walk out and discuss, but this was a special case, I wanted to be the first in line, after all I was on a mission, David Sedaris and I were going to be friends, maybe even best friends. So, I put my ego aside a little and allowed myself to be seen as one of those crazy people who wait in line for over an hour to simply speak to the "star". I was even a little nervous.
While we are waiting in line, I couldn't help but overhear the two blonde Dallas or Houston girls talking in front of us. I kept looking at them wondering if either them had actually ever read a book, they didn't look like the book types if you know what I mean. I don't totally recall what they were talking about, but I know it involved a lot of giggles and likes, so, of course, I was pretty much horrified and fascinated with them and they were so close to me, I had to exchange a few words with them. The conversation pretty much went like this:
girls: we love david
me: yeah, me too
girls: we drove all the way from houston (or dallas), where did y'all come from?
me: austin
girls: oh, how long did that take?
me: an hour and a half or so
girls: oh, we drove three hours and we are driving back tonight
me: oh
me in my head: what is this? a freakin contest?
As we got closer and closer, I got more and more nervous and could hardly speak. My hands began to sweat, words were swirling in my head, what was I going to say? What was I going to ask? It was almost my time! The girls stepped up to David and I was next, it was almost GO time! I then had this overwhelming sense of calm and knew David and I would fall into a deep friend love affair, I was busy fantasizing about our friendship when I was abruptly jolted back to reality when I heard David ask one of the girls, "So, what do you do for a living and what's the strangest thing you have ever encountered at your job?" My headed started racing, I was looking for an answer, a clever one to give him, because surely he would ask me the same question! Then I heard one of them answer, in her cute little dumb southern drawl, "Well" heehee "I'm a flight attendant and I guess the strangest thing I ever did see was a Seizure Lizard." FUCK, FUCK, FUCK, how was I ever going to out do a Seizure Lizard, I didn't even know what one of those were, but come on!!!!!!!!! David was as intrigued as I was, maybe even more intrigued. She went on to explain that some passenger that boarded one of her flights was prone to seizures and he brought on a lizard with him that would apparently alert the flight deck if the man was about to have a seizure...of course he didn't, but still a goddamn seizure lizard! ARG! How was I ever going to beat that?
So, seizure lizard lady and her blonde friend moved on and finally it was my turn! I was so excited and nervous I didn't even know what to do with myself, so I started with a simple, "Hello" and handed my books over and asked for an autograph for my roommate's boyfriend. David obliged me and then he started to draw a pumpkin head in one of my books just as I asked, "David, may I ask you a question?" and he said, "Anything..." I then continued on, slowly, cautiously, "So, does everything happen to last week or yesterday?" I thought I was being clever, until he stopped mid drawing and I swear I threw him, the pen almost went off of the page he was sketching on and he just looked at me like I had 10 heads. And that was it, it was over, my time was up and I had failed. So, I lowered my 10 heads and said "Thanks."
From that moment on I knew I would have to become famous, perhaps a famous writer and best friend Augusten and then David would be so jealous he would beg to be my friend...
So far, I am still working on it...after a few years of trying to stay away from David's books, I am back on the David Sedaris train, full throttle.
I was really into what David S. was saying, but mostly I could not stop thinking about what I was going to say to him when we finally met. I had to think of something good, something super catchy and smart so he would want to be best friends with me. I half listened to what he said, laughed at the appropriate times (just in case he saw me in the audience, I didn't want him to think I wasn't thoroughly amused by him). I kept saying lines and asking questions over and over in my head, giggling a little to myself, mentally patting myself on the back, I would win him over yet...the only problem was, that the main question that kept popping into my head was "did everything happen to David last week and yesterday?" He kept talking about all these things that happened to him last week and yesterday, for example, he went to the zoo and saw spider monkeys masturbating last week when he was in Boston..Ok, so that is the only example I can think of at the moment, but I know he mentioned things that happened yesterday or last week throughout the entire reading...nothing and I mean nothing happened five years ago...
Anyway, when David was finished speaking, we were invited to form a line to buy books and get autographs, etc. Normally, I would just walk out and discuss, but this was a special case, I wanted to be the first in line, after all I was on a mission, David Sedaris and I were going to be friends, maybe even best friends. So, I put my ego aside a little and allowed myself to be seen as one of those crazy people who wait in line for over an hour to simply speak to the "star". I was even a little nervous.
While we are waiting in line, I couldn't help but overhear the two blonde Dallas or Houston girls talking in front of us. I kept looking at them wondering if either them had actually ever read a book, they didn't look like the book types if you know what I mean. I don't totally recall what they were talking about, but I know it involved a lot of giggles and likes, so, of course, I was pretty much horrified and fascinated with them and they were so close to me, I had to exchange a few words with them. The conversation pretty much went like this:
girls: we love david
me: yeah, me too
girls: we drove all the way from houston (or dallas), where did y'all come from?
me: austin
girls: oh, how long did that take?
me: an hour and a half or so
girls: oh, we drove three hours and we are driving back tonight
me: oh
me in my head: what is this? a freakin contest?
As we got closer and closer, I got more and more nervous and could hardly speak. My hands began to sweat, words were swirling in my head, what was I going to say? What was I going to ask? It was almost my time! The girls stepped up to David and I was next, it was almost GO time! I then had this overwhelming sense of calm and knew David and I would fall into a deep friend love affair, I was busy fantasizing about our friendship when I was abruptly jolted back to reality when I heard David ask one of the girls, "So, what do you do for a living and what's the strangest thing you have ever encountered at your job?" My headed started racing, I was looking for an answer, a clever one to give him, because surely he would ask me the same question! Then I heard one of them answer, in her cute little dumb southern drawl, "Well" heehee "I'm a flight attendant and I guess the strangest thing I ever did see was a Seizure Lizard." FUCK, FUCK, FUCK, how was I ever going to out do a Seizure Lizard, I didn't even know what one of those were, but come on!!!!!!!!! David was as intrigued as I was, maybe even more intrigued. She went on to explain that some passenger that boarded one of her flights was prone to seizures and he brought on a lizard with him that would apparently alert the flight deck if the man was about to have a seizure...of course he didn't, but still a goddamn seizure lizard! ARG! How was I ever going to beat that?
So, seizure lizard lady and her blonde friend moved on and finally it was my turn! I was so excited and nervous I didn't even know what to do with myself, so I started with a simple, "Hello" and handed my books over and asked for an autograph for my roommate's boyfriend. David obliged me and then he started to draw a pumpkin head in one of my books just as I asked, "David, may I ask you a question?" and he said, "Anything..." I then continued on, slowly, cautiously, "So, does everything happen to last week or yesterday?" I thought I was being clever, until he stopped mid drawing and I swear I threw him, the pen almost went off of the page he was sketching on and he just looked at me like I had 10 heads. And that was it, it was over, my time was up and I had failed. So, I lowered my 10 heads and said "Thanks."
From that moment on I knew I would have to become famous, perhaps a famous writer and best friend Augusten and then David would be so jealous he would beg to be my friend...
So far, I am still working on it...after a few years of trying to stay away from David's books, I am back on the David Sedaris train, full throttle.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Can You Show Me The Way to Santa Fe or Santa Barbara???
Our journey begins on Saturday, April 18, 2009 in Austin, TX
(key players are Evan, Casey and the dogs).
Does anything really prepare you for a move? I mean really?
I started preparing for my move weeks in advance, but when it got to moving day, I still felt I could have prepared more and done everything differently, better...I wished I knew I was in a good place Friday night, but I knew I had a long Saturday ahead of me. Early Saturday morning Casey joined me for many more hours of packing...After hours and hours and I mean hours of packing and throwing away and labeling, etc. Casey and I hardly knew what to do with ourselves, we had done all we could do so, we decided the most rewarding thing to do was to take a load off and lay on my stripped bed in my packed up house on Salina Street. We talked and laughed and played on Facebook laughing ourselves into a tizzy. After we were all laughed up, the movers arrived to haul my stuff away. (It turns out the movers I hired were actually the movers I used when I first moved into the Salina house three years earlier). The movers came, packed up, dropped off and all went super smoothly, they were gems (thank you Infinity Movers). My "last" night in Austin was somewhat bittersweet as I find many departures to be (what is that about?), I kind of like to view this move as a "See you soon!" rather than a "Good-Bye" kinda move.
When I went to sleep Saturday night, I was in a slight state of shock, was I really leaving Texas after almost seven years? Really? I didn't really have an answer for that, then at 6 am, I jumped out of bed with the epiphany that I was really moving and had some shit to do (I am not sure I even slept the night before), so I ran home, did some house moving type stuff and then went to the gym, where my trainer made me do awful things like pull her across the gym with resistance bands around my waist. As awful as it was, it probably helped me keep my cool. Post torture work out, I caffeinated myself and went back to do do do, Casey came to join me shortly there after.
After running around like chickens with their heads cut off, Casey and I picked the dogs up from Laura and Charlie's (god bless them), drugged the pup and we were on our merry way, El Paso bound...or so we thought. The drive through Texas was totally uneventful and not as boring as I thought it would be. We stopped somewhere in the middle of nowhere and ate Subway, Subway was better than I remembered, it was so good and satisfying (and painless, so long as I took my casein/glutard pills) I tried to convince Casey that we should eat it for breakfast, lunch and dinner...healthy and cheap, how does it get any better than that?! Anyway, we thought our drive from the middle of nowhere to El Paso would be about an hour or so, but much to our dismay, we found out it was another two or three hours...so, after departing the middle of nowhere we decided we would drive until we were tired. I was so excited and rejuvenated post Subway I thought I would be able to make it all the way to El Paso, maybe even past El Paso, but I was wrong...we drove for about an hour in the twilight and then my eyes started to get heavy and I couldn't tell where lights were coming from and what they even belonged to...so we drove as far as we could, which turned out being Van Horn, TX. I hadn't heard of Van Horn anything before either, well until the day before because they apparently have a great Mexican Restaurant (thank you Lisa and Boo), Chuy's (no relation to the Austin one) and I wish I could report more about the place, but we didn't eat there, we just crashed at a relatively nice Motel 8 or 6 or whatever (and for $10 more we could even have our doggies in legitamately, no sneaking necessary), so we showered (seperately), played on Facebook, talked some more then passed out around 10:30 pm.
Early Monday morning we continued on from Van Horn, still El Paso bound on a mission for coffee. After two hours of driving, just outside El Paso, listening to the radio, Casey and I noticed that the woman on the radio said it was 7:30 am, only my car clock said 8:30 am, instantaneously, Casey and I looked at each other and said aloud, "no it is not 7:30!" (and laughed of course)...I thought the radio show had been pre-recorded, Casey just thought the lady was wrong, then we checked the time on our phones and sure enough, we had gained an hour. Just inside El Paso we had hit gold, Starbucks and my favorite kind no less, a drive through, although we didn't go through the drive through. The service was great, the coffee mediocre (sp?), but it did the trick and on we went.
We continued our journey through the "Land of Enchantment" (New Mexico, which we deemed the "Switzerland of America" - we tried to come up with Slogans for all the States, but I think we stopped after four or five) and Tucson (do not ever forget to "Pray for Tucson") which we were gong to have lunch at, but it seemed that the whole of Tucson was under construction so we couldn't get into it...it was kind of strange...so we continued on a mission for a place to eat and a bathroom...no sooner than asking where we could stop aloud in the car, we came across a very clean Shell station and an El Pollo Loco. We devoured delicious chicken in the car with the dogs ever so patiently watching us. We then continued through Phoenix, where we hit some traffic, not bad, at least we got to listen to decent radio, oh and we got another hour on our side somewhere in Zona, but I don't remember the exact spot we actually noticed it. We drove and drove until we got to a little town that was near the Zona - Cali border, unfortunately the woman at the Chevron couldn't tell us how far it was to Cali...so on we went with our treck, still unsure of where we were going to stop. And then we saw it, our second boarder patrol stop place, but we noticed that this one was different, it was from the Arizona - California boarder into Blythe, I swear crossing over that boarder, you could feel the difference (not that Arizona is bad) and that's when we knew it was time to take a break after a wonderful 13 hours of driving. We got a perfectly fine motel room, that again for $10 allowed us to have the dogs and was not more than a five second drive from a drive through Starbucks. We checked in, put our things down (dogs included) and went across the street to a Mexican Fish restaurant, that's right, a fish restaurant in the middle of nowhere, we opted for beef and I opted for a Marg. Post food and Marg, we then went back to the room and proceeded to amuse ourselves for over an hour on Facebook and were asleep by 9:30pm.
Tuesday, we woke up around 5:30 am, when the pup decided it would be a great idea to perch on my head and then playfully brawl with the Wazowsk on Casey's head. Finally, we rose, fed the beasts, packed the car and then we were west bound once again around 7 am... (well, sorta west bound, we had to head a little east for our coffee and Arizona -California boarder pictures - how could we resist? I mean really?).
And so we continued west, we drove and drove, passed through Cochella (now I know where I will be going next year during that Music Festival) and continued on through many other places that I don't remember and through Riverside. Riverside is when we really knew we were in LA, the traffic to say the least, sucked. The traffic was so brutal and our bladders so small, we had to stop in Riverside for a restroom break and maybe some gas for the car, the one gas station I decided to pull into happened to be out of gas and the bathroom was the worst one we encountered the entire trip...good ole Riverside.
After a sort of traumatic stop experience, we then continued on still west bound, until we got to the Sades, as in the Pacific Palisades, where we unloaded the dogs and ourselves and visited dad and we were fed...The dogs got to play, the girls were replenished and we went on our way, again, Santa Barbara bound.
On our way tomom's house, we were at a light and who was next to us? Yup, you guessed it Brad Pitt, just kidding, Momma. We raced home, she won (I only think she won because of the extra bodies and cargo we had in our car)...We had a class and some Thai food and great company...we finally crashed on a blow up bed with a slow leak around 12:45 am. We woke up early, enveloped by the slow leaking bed (picture me in a taco shell, now replace that taco shell with a blow up bed)...it got to a point where the Wazowsk didn't even wanna jumping on it...
We woke up, we coffeed, we ran errands, we lunched with Susan and Susan and Casey left, LA bound once again.
Thursday mom and I were LA bound for a fam lunch, which was awesome.
So, we are pretty much up to date, minus a few trips to the dog park, a few meals, a few phone calls, few dog interactions, movies and maybe some laundry, etc.
Now, I can happily announce that the journey continues, now in Santa Barbara. My SB time still kinda feels like a vacation, well other than a few things on my car geeking out (these things are not suppose to happen on a vacay are they?) . It still feels very vacation like. I am currently looking for work and applying at bakeries around town and/or whatever else tickles my fancy I applied to a Cupcake place today) and open to all of the possibilities...
And if anyone wants to go on a roadtrip, I might be down. YA!
I will continue to keep everyone posted, I don't know how often, but I will update for shiz.
Please feel free to call and/or email me, I want to hear about all y'all. Look forward to hearing and seeing everyone soon!!!!
Kisses!!!!!!!!!
(key players are Evan, Casey and the dogs).
Does anything really prepare you for a move? I mean really?
I started preparing for my move weeks in advance, but when it got to moving day, I still felt I could have prepared more and done everything differently, better...I wished I knew I was in a good place Friday night, but I knew I had a long Saturday ahead of me. Early Saturday morning Casey joined me for many more hours of packing...After hours and hours and I mean hours of packing and throwing away and labeling, etc. Casey and I hardly knew what to do with ourselves, we had done all we could do so, we decided the most rewarding thing to do was to take a load off and lay on my stripped bed in my packed up house on Salina Street. We talked and laughed and played on Facebook laughing ourselves into a tizzy. After we were all laughed up, the movers arrived to haul my stuff away. (It turns out the movers I hired were actually the movers I used when I first moved into the Salina house three years earlier). The movers came, packed up, dropped off and all went super smoothly, they were gems (thank you Infinity Movers). My "last" night in Austin was somewhat bittersweet as I find many departures to be (what is that about?), I kind of like to view this move as a "See you soon!" rather than a "Good-Bye" kinda move.
When I went to sleep Saturday night, I was in a slight state of shock, was I really leaving Texas after almost seven years? Really? I didn't really have an answer for that, then at 6 am, I jumped out of bed with the epiphany that I was really moving and had some shit to do (I am not sure I even slept the night before), so I ran home, did some house moving type stuff and then went to the gym, where my trainer made me do awful things like pull her across the gym with resistance bands around my waist. As awful as it was, it probably helped me keep my cool. Post torture work out, I caffeinated myself and went back to do do do, Casey came to join me shortly there after.
After running around like chickens with their heads cut off, Casey and I picked the dogs up from Laura and Charlie's (god bless them), drugged the pup and we were on our merry way, El Paso bound...or so we thought. The drive through Texas was totally uneventful and not as boring as I thought it would be. We stopped somewhere in the middle of nowhere and ate Subway, Subway was better than I remembered, it was so good and satisfying (and painless, so long as I took my casein/glutard pills) I tried to convince Casey that we should eat it for breakfast, lunch and dinner...healthy and cheap, how does it get any better than that?! Anyway, we thought our drive from the middle of nowhere to El Paso would be about an hour or so, but much to our dismay, we found out it was another two or three hours...so, after departing the middle of nowhere we decided we would drive until we were tired. I was so excited and rejuvenated post Subway I thought I would be able to make it all the way to El Paso, maybe even past El Paso, but I was wrong...we drove for about an hour in the twilight and then my eyes started to get heavy and I couldn't tell where lights were coming from and what they even belonged to...so we drove as far as we could, which turned out being Van Horn, TX. I hadn't heard of Van Horn anything before either, well until the day before because they apparently have a great Mexican Restaurant (thank you Lisa and Boo), Chuy's (no relation to the Austin one) and I wish I could report more about the place, but we didn't eat there, we just crashed at a relatively nice Motel 8 or 6 or whatever (and for $10 more we could even have our doggies in legitamately, no sneaking necessary), so we showered (seperately), played on Facebook, talked some more then passed out around 10:30 pm.
Early Monday morning we continued on from Van Horn, still El Paso bound on a mission for coffee. After two hours of driving, just outside El Paso, listening to the radio, Casey and I noticed that the woman on the radio said it was 7:30 am, only my car clock said 8:30 am, instantaneously, Casey and I looked at each other and said aloud, "no it is not 7:30!" (and laughed of course)...I thought the radio show had been pre-recorded, Casey just thought the lady was wrong, then we checked the time on our phones and sure enough, we had gained an hour. Just inside El Paso we had hit gold, Starbucks and my favorite kind no less, a drive through, although we didn't go through the drive through. The service was great, the coffee mediocre (sp?), but it did the trick and on we went.
We continued our journey through the "Land of Enchantment" (New Mexico, which we deemed the "Switzerland of America" - we tried to come up with Slogans for all the States, but I think we stopped after four or five) and Tucson (do not ever forget to "Pray for Tucson") which we were gong to have lunch at, but it seemed that the whole of Tucson was under construction so we couldn't get into it...it was kind of strange...so we continued on a mission for a place to eat and a bathroom...no sooner than asking where we could stop aloud in the car, we came across a very clean Shell station and an El Pollo Loco. We devoured delicious chicken in the car with the dogs ever so patiently watching us. We then continued through Phoenix, where we hit some traffic, not bad, at least we got to listen to decent radio, oh and we got another hour on our side somewhere in Zona, but I don't remember the exact spot we actually noticed it. We drove and drove until we got to a little town that was near the Zona - Cali border, unfortunately the woman at the Chevron couldn't tell us how far it was to Cali...so on we went with our treck, still unsure of where we were going to stop. And then we saw it, our second boarder patrol stop place, but we noticed that this one was different, it was from the Arizona - California boarder into Blythe, I swear crossing over that boarder, you could feel the difference (not that Arizona is bad) and that's when we knew it was time to take a break after a wonderful 13 hours of driving. We got a perfectly fine motel room, that again for $10 allowed us to have the dogs and was not more than a five second drive from a drive through Starbucks. We checked in, put our things down (dogs included) and went across the street to a Mexican Fish restaurant, that's right, a fish restaurant in the middle of nowhere, we opted for beef and I opted for a Marg. Post food and Marg, we then went back to the room and proceeded to amuse ourselves for over an hour on Facebook and were asleep by 9:30pm.
Tuesday, we woke up around 5:30 am, when the pup decided it would be a great idea to perch on my head and then playfully brawl with the Wazowsk on Casey's head. Finally, we rose, fed the beasts, packed the car and then we were west bound once again around 7 am... (well, sorta west bound, we had to head a little east for our coffee and Arizona -California boarder pictures - how could we resist? I mean really?).
And so we continued west, we drove and drove, passed through Cochella (now I know where I will be going next year during that Music Festival) and continued on through many other places that I don't remember and through Riverside. Riverside is when we really knew we were in LA, the traffic to say the least, sucked. The traffic was so brutal and our bladders so small, we had to stop in Riverside for a restroom break and maybe some gas for the car, the one gas station I decided to pull into happened to be out of gas and the bathroom was the worst one we encountered the entire trip...good ole Riverside.
After a sort of traumatic stop experience, we then continued on still west bound, until we got to the Sades, as in the Pacific Palisades, where we unloaded the dogs and ourselves and visited dad and we were fed...The dogs got to play, the girls were replenished and we went on our way, again, Santa Barbara bound.
On our way tomom's house, we were at a light and who was next to us? Yup, you guessed it Brad Pitt, just kidding, Momma. We raced home, she won (I only think she won because of the extra bodies and cargo we had in our car)...We had a class and some Thai food and great company...we finally crashed on a blow up bed with a slow leak around 12:45 am. We woke up early, enveloped by the slow leaking bed (picture me in a taco shell, now replace that taco shell with a blow up bed)...it got to a point where the Wazowsk didn't even wanna jumping on it...
We woke up, we coffeed, we ran errands, we lunched with Susan and Susan and Casey left, LA bound once again.
Thursday mom and I were LA bound for a fam lunch, which was awesome.
So, we are pretty much up to date, minus a few trips to the dog park, a few meals, a few phone calls, few dog interactions, movies and maybe some laundry, etc.
Now, I can happily announce that the journey continues, now in Santa Barbara. My SB time still kinda feels like a vacation, well other than a few things on my car geeking out (these things are not suppose to happen on a vacay are they?) . It still feels very vacation like. I am currently looking for work and applying at bakeries around town and/or whatever else tickles my fancy I applied to a Cupcake place today) and open to all of the possibilities...
And if anyone wants to go on a roadtrip, I might be down. YA!
I will continue to keep everyone posted, I don't know how often, but I will update for shiz.
Please feel free to call and/or email me, I want to hear about all y'all. Look forward to hearing and seeing everyone soon!!!!
Kisses!!!!!!!!!
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Show Me The Route to SB Please...
So, as most of you know, I packed up my house on Salina Street and put it in storage. I then loaded up the dogs, a few suitcases and a pregnant Casey and we headed west. The trip to California was wonderfully uneventful...we stopped and got gas, let the dogs out, found pretty decent motels that allowed dogs and we laughed a lot, oh and we drank coffee and ate a few times. As of this trip, I am now a fan of the road trip. How does it get any better than this?!
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