I walked home for lunch today. There really is no better place than Memphis on a beautiful fall day. The crushing humidity and heat of summer are gone but the cold, wet north wind hasn't started to blow.

Yet.

And you see such a nice cross-section of people. The power ties from Morgan Keegan, the redshirts from Auto Zone, urine-reeking homeless people, befuddled tourists...I tell you, Main Street was bustling today.

It's kind of sad, though, 'cause a couple weeks ago me and Sonya were at the Arcade. In the back room they've got this huge poster-print of Main Street in the late forties. Now that was a happenin' strip, y'all. Movie theaters, seafood joints, hotels, department stores...it kind of looked like Bedford Falls after it became Pottersville.

Personally, I think Pottersville looked like a lot more fun.

Well, Sonya didn't tie one on Friday night, though Jen and I did get pleasantly squiffed on beer, champagne and vodka.

Honestly, Sonya picks and chooses her drunks pretty shrewdly these days. I think she overindulged during her first semester of college at Arkansas State. I wasn't there, of course, but I've heard that fall in Jonesboro was one long, drunken party. I knew the people she was at college with, so I believe it.

So Sonya doesn't drink like she used too, but when she does it's pretty cool to see. She lets her hair all the way down - and she's quite the flirt, too. If you're ever out drinkin' with Sonya and she's hittin' it pretty hard, stop drinking and watch her. I promise you'll be entertained. Ask her any question - she'll answer!

Friday night was fun, though. Sonya and Jen were hunting for corsets on the internet. God only knows why. Anyway, this led to them downloading all sorts of naughty pictures in their hunt for foundation garments. I enjoyed it immensely. Many, many very bad girls. They also started cruising through a bunch of gothic jewelry. I have Christmas present ideas now.

The Gridiron burned Friday night! This is a very traumatic thing. The Gridiron is a greasy spoon on the first floor of the hotel next door. It can always be relied on for an artery-clogging entree. Or it could be, until it burned.

I was walking Roxy Saturday morning when I ran into Beth, our apartment manager. She has a dog named Dusty, a sweet, long-legged gray poodle. Roxy loves Dusty. Dusty feels the same. So, while the dogs were flirting, Beth told me about the grease-fueled inferno from the night before.

They've been workin' like dogs in there since Sunday, though. Hopefully, the wonderful little pit will make a full recovery.

Angie called Saturday morning to remind Sonya and I that she was having a Halloween party that night. Why a week before Halloween? 'Cause she didn't want to compete with the actual holiday.

So Saturday was spent costume shopping, first at Party City, then at Big Lots. Then at Garden Ridge. I got the priest's cassock with attached collar. It makes me feel ecumenical. Sonya liked it too.

"I knew I'd get you in a dress eventually," she said.

"It's not a dress," I explained, "it's a cassock."

"Has it got legs?" she asked.

She had me there.

Big Lots is a closeout store - like Wal Mart without all that ambition. I did find what I wanted for Christmas there, though. It's this toy guitar. You press on one of the frets and it activates an infrared beam where you'd strum a normal guitar. Run your fingers through the beam and it plays a selection of cheesy-cool guitar riffs. It had a cool-ass whammy board, too. I must have this toy.

Angie's parties are always interesting. Angie is a sign language interpreter. It sounds like a pretty normal job, right? It's not. Through her interpreting gig Angie met this criminal who she started dating. She broke it off right after he cleaned out her house. He's in jail now, though, so that ended well. At any rate, this made her life very exciting (and entertaining, for me) earlier this summer. She hooked up with him at her last party.

At the party Saturday night were me (as a priest), Sonya (as a goth-sinner chick) and Jen (as a black-eyed pea). There was also Angie (dressed as a freaky hippie chick) one of her fellow interpreters (an Elvira-type) and her husband - who's a prison gaurd in real life. Add a smattering of surly teenagers, band geeks and SCA types and you start to see what kind of party this was. The employees of one of our local mental hospitals were supposed to be there, but Sonya and I left before they arrived. I gave HTML tips to one of the surly teenagers.

"What's the code to loop a MIDI file?" he asked.

"Just don't do it," I told him.

On Sunday the Saints won and the Falcons lost. What more could I ask for?

Sonya and I went to my mom's for dinner tonight. Let me tell you a little bit about my mom. Her and my dad got divorced when I was pretty small. She worked for the last twenty year at a plant where they make corn syrup. When she retired she was a refinery operator. She quit taking shit off of people a long time ago. My mom is one of these people who really marches to the beat of her own drummer. Sonya says she's eccentric. I have to agree. Seeing as how we all turn into our parents eventually...well, I can easily picture myself being just as wonderfully odd as she is when I'm her age.

We got over there tonight and my mom immediately recruited me to take an exercise bike to a friend of her's house. We got there, I took the bike out of the back of my truck, and we left it on this woman's porch. My mom headed back to the truck.

"Are we going to speak to these people?" I asked her.

"Nope," my mom shook her head firmly, "I don't like her any more."

It seems this woman was my mom's connection in the thriving beanie baby black market in West Memphis. The woman cut her off. Hence, she is on my mom's shit list.

We went by the grocery store. On the way back, my mom told me about her trip to Wal Mart earlier in the day.

"I was in the produce section," she said, "and this little old man came up to me with some frozen okra. He asked me if I thought it would be okay to cook with.

"'I'm sure it is - I've used it before,' I told him.

"'Well, I just cook for myself,' he said to me, 'I'm sure you cook for a big family.'

"I didn't say anything.

"'I'm sure you cook for a big family,' he said again."

"This is where you tell him 'yes,' right?" I grinned.

"I told him yes, I do," she concluded, "he was hitting on me, wasn't he?"

I told her that he was.

"He was clean," she mused, "but he just wasn't my type, you know?"

Oh dear god. The new Texas Chainsaw movie - the one with Matt McConaughey and Renee Zellweger - is coming on HBO. I must watch.

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