King of Etruria

28 February 2005

The pretty orange tabby cat has definitely adopted us now. I found Xenos asleep in the flowerbox outside the kitchen window this morning. The humane society is open 10:30 - 5pm, which seems like crappy hours if you actually want to, say, trap a cat and bring him in so someone can adopt him. Maybe tomorrow or Wednesday I can do it. The poor thing looks like someone's house cat who was turned out. He's ultra-friendly and adorable. So if you want a cat, let me know before I take him in. :) I'd keep him, but Poopy would have none of it. Sweetie, however, presents her ass to Xenos every time she sees him. What a little slut.

 

Posted at 2124.

25 February 2005

Bryan forwarded me this link to a blog entry at somethingawful.com about British fashions of the 1960s and 1970s. Since I don't normally laugh out loud until I start crying because of something I read on the in-ter-net, I felt the need, nay, the duty, to pass it along. Enjoy.

 

Posted at 2049.

23 February 2005

Today's blog entry has been brought to you by the the words Happy and Birthday and the numbers 2 and 8. That is, if you're Juline. If not, I guess it sucks to be you.

 

Posted at 2049.

22 February 2005

The latest art installation from that most famous of Frenchies, Kristin-o: The Gates... of Hell. Saffron-colored post-it notes adhere delicately to iron paperclips, creating spectacularly unfurled orthostates of hue and hardness. A lone plastic figurine stands sentinel at the nadir of the arc, menacing peripatetic passersby. Enter the gates, and he'll swallow your soul.

 

Posted at 2150.

21 February 2005

Coming soon to a scent counter near you! New from KK Induscents... A fragrance everyone will be talking about! Have you ever walked out of the house and realized you had forgotten to apply perfume? Sometimes, it's too late to go back and douse yourself until you reek so badly your coworkers call HR and report you as a public health hazard. Our new perfume will solve both of those problems at once. Eau de Joe is a powerful fragrance that combines the pungent aroma of java with the sweet undertones of caramel and chocolate to make you smell just like the dregs of that 20-year-old coffeepot in the breakroom. Best of all, Eau de Joe can be applied anywhere! Simply fail to fully seal your travel mug of hot coffee and take a bumpy bus ride 20 minutes to work. By the time you make it in, you'll have enough Eau de Joe on you to last all day!

Eau de Joe comes in three sizes: 20-ounce grande, 12-ounce tall, and 2-ounce espresso travel size. Eau de Joe. The perfume you'll love a latte(tm)!

 

Posted at 2245.

18 February 2005

Standing on Chairs without Boys. The cats have been making an incredible amount of noise this morning, knocking crap down all over the place. So I'm sitting in my office and hear a lot of scurrying going on in the living room. I look out the office door and see a little mouse run across the floor and under the bookshelf near the kitchen, then two cats swiping at it as they chase in hot pursuit. Great. I suppose that I should let the cats get the mouse, because it's the circle of life and the poor little things are trapped indoors unable to hunt for the rest of their days. But at the same time, I don't really want to find a mouse carcass deposited in my lap or on my couch or *shudder* waking up to a junior version of The Godfather with a mouse on my pillow.

Crap. Crap crap crap crap. I'd have to get dressed, go out, and get a mousetrap if I wanted to catch it now. The cats would probably knock over a glue trap and get caught in a snap trap. And they'd probably end up catching it while I was gone anyway, leaving a long bloody trail across the linoleum.

Ah well. Updates when they happen. I could just hide out upstairs all day so that I don't have to think about it.

 

Posted at 1019.

Part Deux. I moved the bookshelf after I felt more comfortable (shower, contacts, and clothing because there's no sense in chasing a mouse when you're dirty, blind, and naked), and the mouse didn't try to hide. I thought it was a dustbunny at first because, well, I'm not exactly the World's Best Homemaker(tm). I poked it with the broom handle until it was out from underneath the bookshelf, then I summarily swept it out the door. The cats appear to have at least incapacitated it. Its back right leg was useless. But I didn't kill it. Now it's only a matter of time until the Zombie Possums come to eat its brain.

 

Posted at 1137.

House Mouse: The Epilogue. I finally sucked up enough anti-mouse-squeamish courage and decided to scoop up the mouse, now really most sincerely dead, from the back porch and toss it in the trashcan. But what was there an hour ago isn't exactly there anymore. Since it was already dead, I guess it wasn't a Possum Zombie but the stray cat that was begging at the door last night. Now that I gave him a plump and tasty treat, he can stop whining at me.

 

Posted at 1917.

17 February 2005

Erik was mocking me today for wearing this outfit...

... claiming I looked like a Belgian farm girl. The only pictures I could find on google to see if I truly did look like one were (other than the porn) these...

I think the one on the left is Sally Field, and the one on the right appears to be a girl drunk on Vermont maple syrup on the front of a bag of pancake mix.

Ah, well. At least I can laugh at myself. I could be evil and retaliate, but I would never do that. I wouldn't even think to imply, for instance, that Erik looks like this miniature schnauzer...

I just am not mean enough to compare his funny little goatee to the chinny chin chin hair of this cuuuute witttttle dooooooggie.

Best in show, my friend. Consider yourself praeteritioed.

 

Posted at 1922.

16 February 2005

Based on my extensive scientific research, it seems that construction might finally be done on Guess Road. They've been working on it since we moved here five years ago, and it's finally 5 lanes. But for the past month or so, random lanes would be closed at the most inconvenient times of day. I decided to make a graph of the number of lanes open every day. And through the blessed miracle of 3-D Excel line graphs, you too can visualize my daily commute. It looks something like this:

 

Posted at 2228.

11 February 2005

I got an e-mail today from my grandfather. In it, he thanks me for the Christmas present I sent. I thought this was a little weird, considering Christmas was months ago. But then I also noticed that he kept saying "We're doing well," and "We appreciate the gift," even though my grandmother passed away last summer. I rechecked the date on the e-mail: December 25, 2003. Cue Twilight Zone music. I'd hazard a guess that somehow his e-mail got caught either in his e-mail client or in his SMTP server, but I don't know what an SMTP server actually is. It just sounds fun. Ssssmmmut-p. Anyway, very curious (and very disconcerting) to get a time-capsule e-mail. This is what it must have felt like for Michael J. Fox to go back to the future.

 

Posted at 2252.

10 February 2005

Tonight's episode of Will and Grace just made reference to Greg Evigan, one of the dads on My Two Dads who was also in BJ and the Bear. Will quips, "I'd never realized just how gay both those titles are." Well, Will, you would have if you had read last month's blog entry.

 

Posted at 2155.

I was walking down Franklin Street today and got distracted by the newly-opening Ralph Lauren store. Mostly it was the bitchy popinjay standing on the sidewalk yelling about the mannequins that caught my eye. He was wearing corduroy pants a shade of purple only found in murex. He caught me so off-guard that I was waylayed by a woman who stuck a microphone in my face and wanted to get my opinions on Valentine's Day. I agreed to talk to her and mumbled something about how it's too much of a hassle to get reservations for dinner, even though I was considering ways to inject St. Valentine the martyr or the Valentine's Day Massacre into my response. Anyway, if anyone out there listens to WCHL, that's what her microphone said. Wonder if I'll be on the air.

 

Posted at 2050.

9 February 2005

I was talking to a customer service representative on the phone today, and he confirmed my address as 6 Tiffany Place. He said, "Tiffany Place, huh? Does that mean that you have breakfast at Tiffany's every day?" I guess telemarketers are being trained as comedians these days.

 

Posted at 1257.

Yesterday, Erik was all excited when I admitted I'd never heard of the term ethnonym (even though I knew what it meant - yay Greek etymology). But I've had to explain far more words to him like legume, yonic, turpitude, schlep, Play-Doh...

 

Posted at 0945.

7 February 2005

I'm a PT cruiser! Well, I will be on Thursday when I go to physical therapy for my knee. Woo! Then hopefully soon the saga of my beleaguered knee will be over.

 

Posted at 1533.

5 February 2005

Last night at Off Franklin, one of the bartenders gave me, Erik, and Drew early mardi gras beads. When a bunch of classicists arrived for happy hour and commented on them, I exclaimed, "And I didn't even have to show my boobs!" It was then I realized the department chair had come in as well.

 

Posted at 1016.

2 February 2005

I was walking through Sears on my way to Old Navy, of course, itching to break my nearly 3-week streak of not having bought any clothes, and I saw this cute white skirt with giant pink flowers on it. It was reduced from $25 to $10, and the clearance sign promised another 50% off. Still, it was Sears, so I continued on to Old Navy, which turned out to be a huge disappointment. Most of the stuff for the spring is totally uninspired. Anyway, I got back to Sears and planned to look at the skirt again, but this gaggle of large women were oohing and aahing over it. Crap! I had to endure minutes of them saying, "Ooooh. This would look cute with a pink shirt," and "Oh, but what if it doesn't fit me?" Blah blah blah. I ended up following them around for a while (ultra-clandestinely, I assure you), and finally the one who picked up the skirt put it down and walked away. Score! I ended up buying it for a grand total after markdowns of $3.48, plus a cute tank-top for $1.50. Yay for Sears. Granted, this would have been a better story had I gotten into a cat-fight for it, wrestling in the aisles amidst the Land's End and other haute couture that Sears shucks, but that would have gotten blood on the nice white skirt.

 

Posted at 1708.