2001-04-23 - 9:51 p.m.

On the internal soundtrack: "London", I think it's called. The Smiths.

So, today I am wearing my FUN PANTS! Woo!

These are a pair of loose capris made of a very lightweight, fluid material. They're extremely comfortable. They are bright coral with little palm trees and boats with funky sails. Very tropical. They are hopelessly corny pants but I love them, and I got them for five bucks.

I also got another pair of fun pants this weekend. They are low-rise stretch tan capris that serve primarily to make my ass as prominent as possible. I wasn't sure if I should get them, since they're very impractical and kind of Mariah Carey really. But I brought them home and Poindexter's eyes bugged out, so I guess that decides that. In fact, he saw me trying them on again later and asked why the tags were still on, and I said, "Well, I'm not sure I really want them."

He looked at me, aghast, and said, "I FORBID you to return those pants!"

Yeah, I guess that decides that.

So, on Friday we were supposed to meet several of Poindexter's coworkers at Bugsy's for "happy hour". Nobody came but us and Tommy. Poindexter's got a lot of lame coworkers, even more lame than me.

It was probably more fun that way, anyhow. I like Tommy. We ended up sitting around there for nearly three hours, eating pizza and drinking beer.

Warning: The rest of this section may be extremely boring, but I'm documenting some anal-retentiveness on Poindexter's and my part that is an important part of characterizing who we are. People who know us personally will laugh and nod in recognition.

Tommy laughed at me when I was getting my salad ready and said he could watch me all day. Well, there was too much lettuce, too much feta cheese, not enough peppers or cucumbers, and dressing on the side. So I pulled the proper proportions out of the bowl and onto a plate, cut up the lettuce, drizzled the dressing, stirred it up, and I was ready. I don't know what it is with people who just let the dressing SIT on top of the salad. Salad should be TOSSED with its dressing. And a little feta goes a long way.

Poindexter has been trying for YEARS now to find good pizza in this area. He likes Bugsy's quality-wise, but they skimp on sauce and go nuts with the cheese (I looked at my refrigerated leftovers yesterday and the cheese was 1/4" thick). His first attempt to get a pizza didn't come back right, so he gave it to Tommy, and then almost harangued the poor waitress: "I need about FIVE TIMES as much sauce and ONE THIRD the cheese."

He likes a bucketful of sauce and a tiny sprinkling of cheese. You should be able to count the individual shreds on the pizza. I've been telling him to tell people "almost no cheese", but he insists on talking about the cheese as a proportion of what's "normal". I told him that I'm going to have him make a pizza at home, I'll take a picture of it, and get multiple copies so he can just SHOW the pizza makers what his pizza ought to look like.

Anyway. It came back with a ton of sauce, and it still had too much cheese, but he just picked it off. He ate half of it Saturday and half on Sunday.

After Bugsy's, we went to Tommy's Cheers. Where everybody knows his name. It was quite impressive, actually -- everywhere he want people were greeting him and the bartender handed him a beer without him having to ask.

A friend of Tommy's, Paul, came over to greet us. I've met him once before and I'm sure Tommy has mentioned me and Poindexter in conversation.

Paul said something to me, and I asked him to repeat, and he made a few nonsense hand gestures and overenunciated, "How are you?"

I figured this was a lame joke by someone who'd had a few too many and would have just dismissed it, except that he immediately started apologizing profusely. He looked really embarrassed, far out of proportion to the situation.

I looked to Tommy for an explanation. Apparently, Paul had forgotten that I am hard-of-hearing, and was just making, as I said, a lame joke to someone he thought was actually hearing. The way people say, when you misunderstand them, "What are you, deaf?" (Now THAT's a fun one to answer.)

Tommy saw him do it, and yelled, "Paul! You moron! She IS deaf!"

According to Tommy, Paul turned WHITE, and must have nearly died on the spot.

Poindexter came back over and I told him what happened and he laughed and laughed. Paul was still apologizing, to anyone within earshot, and Poindexter told him, "She doesn't offend easily; don't worry about it."

Nevertheless, Poindexter ribbed him about it all evening. Poindexter guilted him into dancing with me, even -- "You OWE her a dance, man, you insulted her." Poindexter, well, he Does Not Dance, but Paul does, so it all worked out rather well.

There's really a depressing lack of nice straight white men in the U.S. who will dance with women. I don't know why this came to be. Maybe once dance steps (a la Fred Astaire) went out of style, straight men couldn't figure out what to do with their feet, and then there's that above-the-head rule for the hands that's an indicator of straight vs. gay and is somewhat limiting, style-wise.

Yesterday I changed the oil in the Volkswagen after a longcut (i.e. a shortcut that feels shorter because the drive is nice, but is actually several miles longer) trip to Hollywood video for a Ewan McGregor movie. I ended up getting "Bounce", instead, which was a mistake; there are only about 2 minutes worth watching and it's all when Johnny Galecki is onscreen. But I digress.

Frances' (our neighbor) brother Carl was visiting for a baby shower Frances was throwing for his daughter. He saw me half under the car and Poindexter over by the side of the house, and wandered over to ask Poindexter why he's just standing around while his wife works on the car. Poindexter was actually working on the dryer vent, but that wasn't readily apparent.

Poindexter's reply was, "My wife won't let me touch her car."

Carl later came over to talk to me and told me how he was surprised to see me changing the oil instead of Poindexter, and I said immediately, "It's MY car. Poindexter's not allowed to touch it."

Carl said, sounding mildly surprised, "Well, now, that's just what he said."

I do, actually, let Poindexter touch it. I like to have him drive me around in it sometimes, because driving a convertible is different from riding in one. But it is MY car, and I'll be the one to change the oil. Can't have Poindexter getting credit for owning such a cool car. He drives a pickup, for godsakes.

Interestingly, if I may digress again, pickups have a completely different connotation on the west coast than they do here. Around here, it's practically expected that you're either carrying day workers around in the back of it, or you have a gun rack and Confederate flag adorning it.

Not so in California. People just drive them there. It's as much an option as a four-door sedan, really.

Speaking of Confederate flags, I really have NO idea why people down in Mississippi so desperately want to keep the damn thing on their state flag. Poindexter said the measure passed with a 2 to 1 margin. Why? I mean, state pride is a wonderful thing, and I wish more states had it in bigger proportions, but why express it in a way that is so painful to a sizeable portion of your population?

I heard some really stupid arguments from pro-stars-and-bars folks about how the symbol wasn't always used just by Southerners and there are other symbols used in the Civil War, blah blah blah. That's irrelevant. The Confederate flag is, to most people, an instant visual reminder of the Confederacy and everything that went along with it -- states' rights, Southern pride, and SLAVERY. No matter what the flag also means or what it once meant, a lot of people -- not just descendents of slaves, either -- look at that flag and are reminded of slavery.

It's a shame that Southern pride and slavery have to be represented by the same symbol. You can be proud to be a Southerner and not support slavery or discrimination of any kind. But if that's how you feel, then can't you find another way to express your Southern pride? Maybe someone should just make up a brand-new symbol.

My black tulips are out, and they are cool. They look dark purplish-red when it's sunny, and they pretty much look purplish-black when it's cloudy. I cut a few and put them in a vase on the table.

Still waiting on the blue and white poppies and persian blue allium. Should be a few weeks yet.

It appears, to my delight, that spring is here to stay. I had one of those little odd universe-encompassing thoughts on my way up the stairs one day this weekend. I thought about how it was warm now, and how amazing that is, because I thought the winter would never end, and I thought how nifty it is that the sun always rises and the spring always comes even when it seems like it never will, and how amazing it is that the rotation and revolution of the Earth are so dependable, and how cyclical everything is, and how huge the universe is, and how tiny and insignificant I am compared to all the vast wonders of the seemingly infinite universe.

I can't even think about spring without getting all universal about it.

Speaking of cyclical, and returning down to Earth, I mentioned a couple months ago to Poindexter that I seemed to be finally used to the idea that our house is OURS. For a long time I felt like it was somebody else's house, or that I was renting.

Poindexter, who apparently sees all and knows all about me and never remembers to tell me until I bring up the topic, said,

"That's because you've been living here for a year. You said the same thing in our last house. You seem to need the full change of seasons before you accept it."

It got me thinking about about light patterns in the house -- maybe when a familiar light pattern comes along that I remember from the previous year, it becomes familiar and I finally feel at home. By light patterns, I mean where the sun crosses the sky and how it casts light into the house.

I don't know why I pay so much attention to sunlight, but I do. It would explain why I am such a weather freak and have such an insane amount of fun watching the WeatherBug temperature on my taskbar change throughout the day.

Speaking of which, it's fucking HOT. About 87 right now. It's supposed to return to more spring-like temperatures (70ish) on Wednesday.

In this article about the Peru incident, the father of the missionary on the plane was quoted as saying that they were called to minister to "primitive people" in Peru.

"Primitive people". Hm.

I'm sure it's just a technicality of language here, but it got me thinking. The thing is, and it's really quite amazing, there is no such thing as "primitive people". There are only "primitive" cultures.

Human beings are all the same, everywhere. You can have groups of people with similar physical and mental characteristics, due to all that intermarrying within villages and with neighboring villages in limited areas. But humans don't actually seem to have physically evolved in the Darwinian meaning of the word since they started scattering all over the world.

You could take a newborn baby from a group of people with the most primitive culture you can think find, and give it to an American couple to raise, and that kid will be indistinguishable from anyone else in this country, culturally speaking.

Kinda interesting. It also pretty much negates entirely the concept of "race", but that's a musing for another day.

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