Sweet Pickles

I'll take it.

I hate to be one of those complaining Longhorn fans, for whom enough is never enough.  Even if this one is likely to see us drop in the rankings, a win is a win.  Especially against OU.  So, I'll take it.

Come with!

Tonight at 6:00pm, a group of us will be screening short-films for February's film festival at la maison de Frenchie.  You should totally come.  Bring whatever you'd like to drink, and maybe a little something to nosh.  For those of you pursuing a free-booze pass volunteer pass, the cumulative lengths of the films we view will count toward your 9 hours of service!  Which reminds me...  Note to Frenchie:  Help me remember to circulate a sign-up list, and to keep a running tally of how many hours and minutes of stuff we watch!

My Dilemma

Okay, so... tonight, I'm getting drunk by myself at home (like I do), but now I'm OUT OF BEER!  And since October is the new January, it's too cold for me to go to the convenience store in my pajamas to get more.  So, here are my options, as I see them now (with a buzz):

1.)  Start mixing Maneschewitz with Crystal Light.

2.)  Drunk-text everyone I know locally to come to my house for an 'after party', in order to trick people in to bringing me more beer.

Advice?

The best part...

about Sweet Pickles' faculty exchange happening in summer instead of spring?  These sluts will be back in town for the Film Festival!  It has been eight and a half months since the Texas Women Art Travelers re-packed their SUV and drove away from my house, back to the Promised Land, without me.  That means... less than 4 months until the TWAT rolls back in to town again!

Guess what this weekend is!

RED RIVER SHOOTOUT!!!

Misty-Water-Colored Memory of the Way We Were:  One Friday each October, back when George H. W. Bush was president, we always skipped classes to caravan up I-35 to Big D for the annual UT-OU game.  Although we never got tickets to go inside the Cotton Bowl, we still made the migration every year for the par-tay, and about 15 of us would stay the weekend in a friend's 2-bedroom/1-bath apartment across from the SMU campus.  One year, we decided that we needed something more special than the usual "Hook 'Em" or "Go, 'Horns" to shoe-polish on the back window of K-Bor's car for the ride north, but couldn't figure out what we should write.  That genius T-Bagg proposed: "Dallas-Bound and 'Horny" (and we made the 'o' in Horny in the iconic shape of Bevo's head).  On the highway, we got more complimentary beer passed to us from the open windows of other fans' speeding cars than we knew what to do with!

The Pointer Sisters and I are so excited, and we just can't hide it!

I don't want to jinx myself, but after this afternoon's conference call to Quito, it's looking like your favorite slut is bound for the equator in 2010!  Icing on the cake:  My South American counterpart and I will be exchanging homes as well as our teaching jobs, and dude gots a swimming pool.  Before the conference call, when Sweet Pickles was informed of this fact, guess what he did in his pants.  Frosting on top of the icing on the cake:  I didn't totally understand this part of the conversation (there were five of us around the speaker-phone on our end), but apparently my counterpart's home will come with a live-in handyman (or some kind of servant?).  Sweet Pickles was thinking, "Uh, do you mean like, to take care of things and do shit around the house that I can't do??"  Then, Sweet Pickles had to excuse himself to go change underwear and smoke an 'after' cigarette.  Now, I ain't sayin' Sweet Pickles is a gold digger... but he ain't messin' with no broke faculty-exchanges!  At this point, I think I may have flipped everyone in the meeting off, and said something to the effect of "Swimming pools and servants?  Later, bitches!  I'm out!"

Also, my counterpart and I will be doing a 'transportation exchange' as well.  So if you spot a Latino driving Sexy Edward around town, wave!  Unfortch, my counterpart's automobile is a standard (is that what you call the kind of car that's not automatic, where you have to jack around with the stick-shift?).  At this point in the conference call, some smartass N-Lope made the observation that, even if the car was an automatic, Sweet Pickles still probably shouldn't be driving in a foreign country.  True dat.  N-Lope has ridden shotgun in Sexy Edward often enough to know that Sweet Pickles probably shouldn't be driving in the U.S.  But, no worries... apparently, a taxi to campus only costs $1.00!  And Sweet Pickles loves to be driven places!

The good news for my local peeps is that we're scheduling the exchange for 8 weeks during the summer of 2010.  So, I won't be away long enough for you to start experiencing withdrawal symptoms.  The bad news for my local peeps is that, obviously, Summer 2010 in O-Town is going to suck.  Hard.  If this thought is too unbearable for you, start pricing airfare for a visit to Latin America now.  [When you get down there, we can swim in my pool!]

Special appreciation to my fineass boss for making this possible.  She totally beats out all of my former bosses:  Johnny Vasquez, Jack Mendel, Ueda-san, Nakajima-san, L'il Roy, J-Mur, the Bald Dwarf... even Hisaya's father (who made my first Japan experience possible)!  Awww... thanks, slut.  Love ya ;)

They're baaack!

This past weekend, the Lindas returned to the Lone Star state, safe and sound.  Two weeks in New York, Boston, Halifax, Charlottetown, and Québec City is a whirlwind tour, but it always seems like a lonnnnng time to Daddy Pickles, Sissy Pickles, and me, whenever Mama Pickles is away from the nest for that many days.  Mama Pickles was impressed with all the ports-of-call on their itinerary, but the only one she has definite plans to re-visit in the future is the Big Apple.  She said, "If some people left their hearts in San Francisco, I left mine in New York!"  I'm really pleased that she had a great first time there, and seems to love it as much as I do.  Next time, we'll have to go together.  The Lindas were talking up the idea of going back for a museum tour of NYC, with Sweet Pickles as their tour guide.  Can you imagine taking Manhattan with this crew (pictured below at LaGuardia International)?  It blows my mind that three of these started kindergarten together, and the other two joined them in junior high school.  I hope this is how T-Bagg and Brad Bagby and Wipey and I will spend our retirement!

Ya know what I miss?

Pre-2006 Facebook.  This answers a lot of questions. 

Oh, snap!

Frenchie just sent me this gem.  I plan to use it as the title slide in the lecture I do called "I Don't Get It." 

Good morning, Berlin!

I think that a big reason why I haven't had much to blog about lately has been the soggy-ass weather.  Seriously.  Driving to work this morning, as I pulled into the parking lot, I noticed that the white columns on the front of our building are now green with some kind of fungal growth.  No lie. 

I was further worried by an article I read about the Pacific Ocean losing heat, and the planet entering a 10- to 15-year cooling phase during which temperatures will be lower overall (apparently similar to the 1950s through 1970s).  This does not bode well for my mood.  In general, Sweet Pickles finds that cooling phases are not conducive to sexy times. 

My newest favorite discovery (via D-Sap) is the music of Peter Fox, especially the song Schwarz zu Blau.  I've had it in my head the past couple of days.  I'm finding that its lyrics strike a particularly resonant chord with my mood:  Guten Morgen, Berlin... Du kannst so häßlich sein, so dreckig und grau ("Good morning, Berlin... You can be so dirty, so ugly and gray").  Check out the video.  The animation is pretty great.

My Kind of Storyteller

Normally, I don't usually enjoy children who aren't my godchildren.  However, over at Salon.com, they've got videos of little kids telling stories.  They're all cute, but this one (below) was my fave.  Every story told by a boy involves either heads getting chopped off or buildings collapsing, and every story told by a little girl is a retelling of some commercialized tale involving a princess.  Except for this little girl's.  I liked how her story started out involving herself, and then got all imaginative.  You go on with the magical realism, little girl!