meet the neighbors

So I'm watching this little drama unfolding outside my house. Our neighborhood is a dog neighborhood. As in, dogs next door, dogs across the street, dogs down the road, dogs everywhere. Dogs that bark when you go outside, dogs that bark when you get into or out of your car, dogs that bark when they hear other dogs barking. It's pretty damn annoying. Well, apparently a few got loose from a house down the street, because about 10 minutes ago I heard a bunch of barking and thundering animal running sounds in my front lawn. I looked outside to see 3 big dogs running across our lawn. 2 minutes later, along comes some lady yelling at them. The dogs run back her way. 2 minutes later, more barking and running, and the dogs are running away again. This happens several times, until she finally gets one of the on a leash. The rest sort of trail along with her, stopping to bark at and harass dogs in fenced in yards along the way. Just now she was back out front yelling for another dog to come back. It's kind of hilarious. She's wearing black stretch pants. Not the stylish kind, though.

Most of our neighbors are white, it seems, though a lot of the people in surrounding neighborhoods seem to be black. In the Publix supermarket closest to us, for example, we're generally the only white people there. I texted Alfred all excited the other day because there was another white couple in there. The other supermarket by us is usually pretty evenly split between white and black people. It's an interesting area. Luckily, I'm often in my work costume when I go to the supermarket around here, so everyone's equally staring at me. I bring the races together in my 16th century garb.

In other news, I had the day off today! I have to work all day Saturday, but let's not talk about that. I made strawberry cupcakes for Lucy, who came to see our house and joined us for lunch. The frosting was better than the cupcakes, although they looked pretty cute with a little strawberry slice on top. We drank a bottle of wine while she was here. Because really, what better time for a bottle of white wine than at 1:30 in the afternoon?

In closing, I'd like to share this link to a collection of the Celebrity Jeopardy skits from SNL. We used to sit in the hallway/ghetto my sophomore year in college and listen to the audio on our computers. They still crack me up. Enjoy!

work junk

I worked until 10:00 last night. That's why there was no blog, in case you were wondering. I'm sure everyone was devastated. It kind of sucked, especially because I ordered dinner from IHOP and they got rid of my favorite salad. I was 15 minutes late picking up my dinner, because of an issue with lights, then a kid had an asthma attack and I ended up having to sit in the store with him and a teacher for the rest of the night, so I had to eat half of my dinner 2 hours after I got it. But it could have been worse. Our group for today canceled so I got to sleep in until 6:50 this morning. Bitchin.

I got bitched out at work today by a woman that I just offered a job to. Apparently we pay slave wages, she's worth twice what I offered her, she doesn't take prescription drugs or do cocaine so she shouldn't have to do a drug test, and we have no standards because all of our existing guides are constantly giving incorrect information. I got an earful for a good 10-15 minutes, then she finally left once she realized I wasn't falling all over myself to offer her the salary she wanted. So that was fun.

We're watching Kath and Kim right now, it's kind of crappy. We weren't sure after watching the first one, but I think the second one has sealed the deal. It's not overtly awful, I don't think, I'm not really sure to be honest. I'm sort of doing three things at a time and can't fully concentrate.

crazy dude

No pictures, just a quick story.

I was in the museum store the other morning when a guy rode up on his bike. He parked it on the porch and started looking in the windows, so I ignored him. I was getting a homeless vibe from him and didn't want to deal with it. I walked out the back door a few minutes later and could hear him talking on the front porch. My first thought was that he was talking to himself, but since I really hadn't gotten a very good look at him I figured maybe he was on a cell phone. Five minutes later I walk back out, and he's still on the front porch, still talking. I try to peek through the fence to see him, and realize he's looking through the fence at me! Then he says "oh sorry miss, I was just out here talking to myself to try to stay sane. I saw on the news the other day a guy went crazy and started shooting people in some building, so I'm just trying to keep my sanity out here. I'll leave now." And he got on his bike and left. I wished him luck, but I don't know if he heard me.

various culinary experiences

First, I would like to thank Alfred for his assistance with this post. I'm writing this on Thursday night, but don't have the cord to get the picture from my phone to include it, so he's going to put the picture in and post it on Friday morning. Because we can't just have picture-less posts willy nilly every week. It's just not right.

So we went out to dinner Wednesday night with Ilya and Mercedes. We went to this new place with a Spanish chef and a big tapas menu, it was right up Mercedes' alley. It's the same place we went for my last lunch before I went back to the museum, but this time we did it right, we just ordered a bunch of tapas and all shared. We had squid, chorizo, shrimp, chicken, a Spanish tortilla (kind of an omelet with potatoes in it) and of course sangria. It was really good, even though some of the bigger pieces of squid looked like centipedes. Then afterwards we went out for ice cream at the super delicious ice cream place by Alfred's office. Somehow Alfred managed to resist the frosty goodness, that's my sundae he's holding in the picture.

Tonight we went out again, but just to a bar and grill type place. It's really good too though, I had a meatloaf sandwich with the best pasta salad ever, and Alfred had a sandwich about 5 inches thick. And we had empanadas with some ingenious dip (ranch dressing mixed with salsa, delicious!) as an appetizer. We had a gift certificate from restaurants.com so it was cheap, too.

After dinner tonight we stopped at the grocery store to get some blueberries for breakfast. There was a lady in there who was going through the blackberries and literally touching every single one in each package to find the best ones. She was just standing there and opening each package, poking and touching and squeezing each and every berry. I stood there for a minute just staring at her in shock and she totally didn't notice, she was way too engrossed in manhandling the fruit. It was kind of disgusting. Take home lesson: always wash your produce!

I'm going to hell

On Friday night we went to this guy's house to check out something Alfred found on Craig's list. After he showed us what we came to see (a barge to rent to fix our dock, if you're interested) he was just showing us all the other stuff he has. He had I think 5 or 6 boats in his driveway, all in different stages of being redone, he showed us this huge work space with tools and all sorts of other things just hanging everywhere, he's got a stash of used PVC pipe that he picks up and saves, he owns all these rental properties that he's worked on and redone, he makes dog houses... all sorts of crazy things. He was big into "recycling," aka garbage picking. Very interesting though, I mean nothing is wasted with this dude.

So we're talking to him for close to an hour when he asks what church we go to. Now, being from the north, I get a little weirded out when people ask me this, but I hear it fairly regularly down here (at least when I meet new people). Alfred makes up some answer about how he used to go to this church with his family but we just moved so we haven't found a church yet, blah blah. Then he turns to Alfred and asks:

Dude: Are you saved?
Alfred: Uh, yes.
Dude: good, a personal relationship with Jesus is the most important thing in the world, blah blah. (he turns to me) Are you saved?
Me: No. (he just looks at me) Sorry.

He then goes on about how having Jesus Christ in his heart is what keeps him going and Jesus gave him all these skills and he's so happy and he just lurves him some Jesus. He goes on lecturing for a bit, then turns to Alfred again:

Dude: When you go to heaven and Jesus asks you why you should be allowed into heaven, what are you going to say?
Alfred: Geez, that's a tough one...
Dude: No, it's not. It's the easiest one.
Alfred: (makes up some stuff about God being number 1. The dude doesn't look impressed.) Well, what's your answer?
Dude: I have accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. That's the only answer that will get you into heaven. Doesn't matter what kind of person you are, as long as you accept Jesus as your personal Savior.

He told us about 57 times we need to go to his church. And, big shocker: he's a Baptist. Figures. Baptists, in my experience, are bat-shit crazy. I think there's a requirement in their religion to try to save people they meet, which I guess is why he was pushing us so hard to come to his church.

It reminded me of this one time, at band camp, at the museum, I was talking to a mom and she was asking me about the churches in the area. Thinking she was talking about visiting them for tourist reasons (considering she was there as a tourist) I started telling her about the different historical churches downtown. Then she asks me which church I went to. I told her I didn't, because I lived half an hour away (not the only reason, but hey, it's not her damn business.) Then she asked me if I wanted a close, personal relationship with Jesus. Her crazy potential was finally starting to dawn on me, so I kind of stammered out an "uh, sure?" So she grabs my hand, hold it up in the air, and starts praying to Jesus for me. I came to my senses, took my hand back and said I had to leave. The best part was, as I was telling my boss about it, she starts saying how if I ever have any questions or want to learn more about Jesus or her church she can help me. Apparently she didn't think it was as funny as I did.

Do I radiate a sense of Godlessness or something? Or do I just naturally attract the Jesus freaks? I guess I am a yankee...