Weekend Update With Bonus Weirdo Anecdote

going home
Originally uploaded by mygothlaundry

Today I have been rather frighteningly efficient. I applied for two jobs. I took the dogs for a run in the woods. And I have started my diet seriously, which meant that I had to spend an hour on the computer figuring out how many points are in the modified vichyssoise I made on Saturday night for my poor friend Susan, who is suffering through dental hell. I tell you, figuring out points is not for the weak. For a few moments there I thought it was possible vichyssoise had over 800 points and, actually, so it probably does, if you eat the whole pot. Which I could do right now without blinking, because I am fucking starving. That is okay, though! At least I don't have dental pain! And besides, the hunger is making me dizzy and if you just relax and go with that, you can pretend you're on drugs.

Speaking of drugs, I am mildly curious as to what the guy who sat down at my table at Broadways on Friday night was on. He was extremely strange and, which is embarrassing, I could not at first discern whether he was a) just being weird or b) a performance artist or c) on heavy, serious drugs or d) completely mentally ill. Eventually I came to the conclusion that it was a combination of c and d but I must be slipping, because I used to be able to sort this stuff out a lot faster. He was not unattractive, although not really all that good looking, but, you know, passable. Well, we are all passable, these days, us old Gen Xers, at least in the right light or lack thereof.

"Tell me a joke," he said when he sat down, so I told him my stock joke, the one about the martians and the gas pump and the wraps his dick around him three times and he laughed immoderately. This joke, which I have been telling for almost 30 years simply because it's the one joke that somehow imprinted itself permanently on my brain one day, is not all that funny. Then he made me tell him the punchline four times. That was art, possibly. Then he made a paper airplane, which would have been art and fine except it was a terrible airplane and I have no patience, really, for poor craftsmanship. I admit that my paper airplanes are pretty terrible but in their defense I say chauvinistically that I am a girl and besides, they would totally work if I had a paperclip. Nobody ever has a paperclip, so that's a good safe lie. Then he leaned in to speak to me. Uh oh, I thought, because by this point I was pretty firmly in the highly medicated and crazy as a shithouse rat camp about this guy.
"Your beer is round," he said carefully. "And your tattoos are round."
Hmmm.
"Are you," he asked, leaning in, "Round?"

Well, that's what the diet is supposed to be addressing. At this point, I found something highly important to do on the other side of the bar and he took himself off to enjoy downtown after five and make gnomic utterances at other people. Downtown After Five, this time featuring Drivin' and Cryin', a band I have a soft spot for of old, mostly because of the Kev'n Kinney song Hey Landlord, was pretty good except actually the sound is not at its best from Broadways' roof deck. Usually, the proximity to cheap beer and the distance from the madding crowd more than make up for this but last Friday ended up just being so loud and muddy that Jodi and I finally split and went to Scullys. On Saturday I did various errands and eventually went over to Susan's to sit around and drink beer and give her the aforementioned cold potato soup. Yesterday I did very little except bring in the first harvest from the garden, consisting of three fabulous cucumbers, a whole mess of green beans and two Chinese mystery vegetables that kind of look and smell and taste like turnips or a cross between turnips and jicamas. I boiled them. They were not delicious but I still have hopes, although it's possible that I'm just starving. Or on drugs. Natural, free drugs.