Effluvia

Jumpin' Jesus on a pogo stick!

Never buy a car without Edmunds.

NBC - the mortgage lender of choice.

I am so afraid of this - the teddy bears give me shivers.

Sonya and I might move to Cooper-Young. It's a hip and funky neighborhood. We'll live somewhere in Midtown, anyway.

Bygone Days
Uncensored!

125 YEARS AGO
April 24, 1875

Ladies of Grace Church will hold a strawberry festival this evening at the Peabody Hotel.

At the apogee of the festival the Ladies will shoot strawberries out of their vaginas.

Siobhanorama

From today's entry, talking about the two fat guys she sat between on the plane:

"It wasn't like they were trying to be very large. They just were. I couldn't really complain."

See, I could hack away at this thing for a month and not write such a pithy line.

Two Years Ago

Todd Snider cancelled on us Friday night, the prick. To his credit he had a good excuse: chicken pox! I hear it can be hard on a grown man, so my heart goes out to him. Sonya and I came directly back home, put The Matrix in the DVD player and proceeded to be taters.

Saturday we got up at a reasonable hour to go to my mom's for the celebration of her and my sister's birthdays. For the record Glenda (my mom), Julie (my sister) and Jack (my brother) all share the same birthday - April 22. It makes it hard to forget, anyway. We stopped by Walgreen's for a gift bag, frou-frou paper and a card for the gifts (Notting Hill and perfume) and on we went. I took my grandmother to run to the store while Sonya visited with her mother in-law.

My grandfather was always very concerned that I learn to drive so that I would be able to take my grandmother places - she's never learned how to drive a car. In high school, a day was rarely complete without taking my grandmother to pay bills, or to pick up a few groceries or to run by my sister's hourse. It was a pleasant little flashback, shuffling around Big Star (the grocery store in West Memphis, from which the very cool band got their name) looking for paper plates and beer.

So the family descended on my mom's house. We ate pizza and spaghetti and hot wings and all manner of rich food, then played dominos. My grandmother took lots of pictures. We had much fun.

Sonya and I are toying with the idea of house-buying, right? Well, we went to actually look at some houses Saturday afternoon, as opposed to simply wrestling with the concept itself, which we've been doing.

For you locals, we started near Union and East Parkway, in the quiet, leafy little neighborhood near the old Lennox School building. For the out-of-towners, this neighborhood was the suburbs about eighty years ago. Now it's full of old people and giant oak trees.

There's only one house for sale over there, but it has potential. It's a skinny old Victorian with a deep, English garden-style back yard and lots of funky flower beds. I levered myself up onto the stairless back deck and went in the wide-open back door. It's a cool place, though it looks a little fuzzy and there's some pretty obvious work that needs to be done.

I called the realtor about it today; apparently it's about to be foreclosed on. Something to consider - if we could get it at a fire-sale price we could afford to do some drastic renovations. We'll see.

Saturday night we joined Ben at Donna's new apartment for dinner. She made cheese-filled little pastas and chocolate ice cream goodies. It was The Day Of Good Food.

The view from Donna's apartment is stunning. She's in a high-rise on the south end of downtown, and the entire north wall is a window that looks out on all of Downtown, the river and Arkansas off to the west. We sat on the floor by the window ('cause Donna got rid of all her old furniture and doesn't have any new yet) with the lights out and watched the city twinkle. Donna played Lady Day and Frank Sinatra on the CD player and we chatted. The night was damned near perfect. And we played Pictionary and drank wine. You can't ask for any more from a Saturday night.

I missed the excitement SUnday morning, though I saw it on the news later and wrote about it to Meredith, who has had similar experiences:

So this morning there was a fire in one of the apartments in the building across from ours. When the firemen got there they put out the fire and found a woman stabbed to death - and a man, on the roof nine stories down, who had apparently jumped.

Neighbors heard the couple arguing shortly before the fire started. Sonya was awakened by screaming, though we had no idea where it was coming from.

Apartment life in the big city, huh?

Other than that yesterday was a wash. We made a brief trip to Sonya's parent's house for an Easter visit. We took the dog with us. I'm not sure which she enjoys more: seeing Sonya's parents and playing in their yard or riding in my car and shedding on the dashboard. She did both yesterday.

Other than that we laid around the house, reading house-buying books and eating marshmallow bunnies. Actually, Sonya just ate the bunnies.

And now we're pre-approved for a mortgage. I feel so grown-up.

That would be two years as of today. Thank you. Thank you very much.