Duh. The whole purpose of coming here was that I was going to blog that I'd met (e:jenks) at the airport bar! I was at the Landmark on Sunday, by coincidence-- I was scheduled for All-Stars and someone called in-- and was running around like an idiot because of all these damn Chicago delays-- what is up with Chicago lately? Uh-- and Chicago delays are the worst because the United gate that's mostly flights there is DIRECTLY across from the bar so the very moment a delay is announced the entire contents of the plane just turn around and come straight into the bar, en masse, with no possibility of thinking of heading to another bar or maybe stopping for a coffee or magazine on the way.
But I digress.
So the place was a war zone when I got there because Whipple can't do a dish and also everyone and their mother wants margaritas because some clever idiot put up a poster of one, and as all bartenders know the humble margarita is just about the #1 Ass-Pain Drink (salt, two liquors, a cordial, a mixer, ice, blended maybe, ugh, gag me).
So the place is covered in lime and sour mix and we have no fresh limes left and there's no salt and there's no glasses and Whipple's running into me and life is pain and I'm having awful cramps and mostly, I wish I were dead.

Several hours of this pass and I'm starting to catch up and feel human, and there's this girl sitting at the corner of the bar-- the corner around which I have to fling myself every time I go from my drink-making-station to the floor where all my tables are. Finally I pause, and notice her looking at me.

"Do you... have a journal online?" she asks.

One of those questions that can fill you with dread. I've had that Livejournal for three years now and while I never quite regret writing things I do, I occasionally wish I had said them differently. (*cough*Jackdaw*cough*) So there's a long pause as I think: "Fuck. Fuck. Did I post any nude pictures of myself?"
Finally I answer: "...Yes?"
"Are you Dragonlady?"
"Yes." A pause. "Elmwoodstrip?" I'm trying to decide if the girl is familiar.
"Elmwoodstrip. I'm (e:jenks)."
"Ahh!" It clicks. Yes, she resembles her picture. Although, she's much less, well, people are usually more three-dimensional than their photos, so, well, sometimes... I'm astonished she recognized me. Her photo is a way better photo of her than mine is of me, and yet, I had no inkling. But then, I'm bad wth faces.
I admit I don't know enough people on here yet that I can totally keep up with everyone's blogs, but for some reason I read hers a lot, so I really do know who she is.
She's delayed enroute to Chicago, and I can only add to the misery, I'm afraid-- most of my customers are trying to get to Chicago and they're all telling me dire, dire things about the planes. But at least, you know, um, we all have the shared consolation of overpriced beer?

Ah Buffalo.

Another funny chance sighting, unrelated to (e:peeps), of course, but funny:
Last night I was at Landmark again, the late server, and I was cleaning up and getting ready to leave the bartender to deal with the place on her own-- it being late. A blond Canadian girl was sitting at the bar waiting for her ride to arrive from Toronto. She was funny, and charming, the kind of girl who can talk about anything to anyone, and the bartender was complimenting her on her great coat, a striking black knee-length thing with white piping. I stayed and talked a few moments-- this girl could have charmed a wooden post, and was all smiles.
I couldn't remember but I was pretty sure I'd had her for a customer before-- but then, I do see a lot of people. And an amazing number of them are at their most outgoing-- they're among strangers, and drinking, and will most likely never be in this place with these people again. Some of them will say anything.

I got home, tired, and (e:zobar) had no plans for dinner, and I couldn't think of anything. "Let's go out." So we went to someplace that would be open at 9:30 on a Monday night: Kosta's.
While sitting eating our gyros and drinking our red wine (ok, so, yes, I have odd food combo craving choices), a girl came into the diner. "Can I use your bathroom?"
She was wearing a striking black knee-length coat with white piping.
I had just finished telling Z about the girl at the bar who could talk to anybody, like, that moment.
She came back out of the bathroom and strode purposefully past us, out the door. Blond curly hair, black leather purse with silver fittings: the very same girl. But no smiles, no charm, no talking-to-a-post-- all purpose, all tiredness, all accumulated stress.
There was a car waiting outside for her. She got in and they drove off to Toronto. Obviously her ride had showed up eventually. I have to remember to tell the bartender.

Oh wow awesome!
This page just spontaneously refreshed itself and I lost my entire post.

Sweet.

This is beautiful: a photographer fills a black pool with pretty naked ladies and takes a series of underwater photographs. Tasteful nudes but maybe not work-safe.

Yes, as (e:zobar) wrote, the lady next door really did call the health inspector on us because we didn't move our compost heap after she 1) lied and said it was illegal, 2) verbally abused me, 3) attempted to verbally abuse Z except he wasn't paying attention.

Now, I was going to put the thing into a nice plastic enclosure, the kind you can buy at Target, and probably move it to a different part of the yard-- it was just behind our garage because the rest of the yard is under constructoin. But after the woman's reprehensible behavior, I believe I will be leaving it where it is. Except now, see, to conform to health code, it has to be elevated twelve inches off the ground-- Rats don't like to climb, so they won't burrow in elevated compost heaps.

So I'll leave it where it is, behind my garage and against her fence, and will, in order to comply with the health inspector she called on me, have to make it larger and uglier.

Sweet, sweet irony.


In other news, I am going to take a big risk and plant most of my tomatoes today. Perhaps the peppers too. The guaranteed frost-free date isn't until May 17th, but the long-term forecasts show no temperatures below 40, and I am impatient, and also the tomato plants are growing rather too large. If anyone wants one, I still have one or two more than I strictly have room for.

(e:kara), I remember you saying something about trading some plants, and I meant to reply and now can't remember where you said that, but my zinneas didn't actually do all that well and I'll be starting most of them from seed outdoors I think, so...

Oh shoot, I have to cut a bunch more sod today to make room for the foxgloves, I forgot.

Happy May Day (yesterday), by the way-- I am going to put up pictures of my garden, I swear, one of these, um, years.

I have been suffering from obsessions lately, the kind of thing where I start reading and can't stop until it's done. This was always a problem of mine in print-- I was dead to the world until every book in the stack from the library was done, all in one long binge-- but the Internet has made this possibly fatal. I just clicked through every single photo put up on The Daily Oliver -- Oliver being a gorgeous, sleek Wiemariner living in the South of France with his brother Hugo and some dude with a camera. Oh my GOD this dog is cool.

It made me sort of want a dog. That and the fact that my older sister, the mommy of Scout ,just adopted a second Springer-- I think it is Scout's full-blood sister, previously owned by Katy's sister-in-law. Lizzie and Scout are nearly identical, although their markings are different, and OH GOD THE CUTE.

But I digress. I keep getting obsessed by things and sucked into them, and then I forget what I was doing, and I keep doing things like teraing myself away from the computer to make breakfast, and then coming back twenty minutes later to see that I sliced one bagel, set it in the toaster, and then abandoned the other bagel on the cutting board, and never turned the toaster on. Right! Right.

Work is a problem: they are changing all our schedules around. I've been part-time for the last five months because I wanted to take a break and finish a novel, and yet they've been shortstaffed so I've been working full-time, and now I am confronted with a choice: keep up this sham of part-time, or just give up and go back to full? Or quit entirely? I will never finish this novel.

Especially because I cannot keep a thought in my head. See, I opened this window to assure (e:zobar) that the coolest car ever, contrary to what he says in his post which I don't know how to link to except by just going ,would be a VW campervan converted to run on vegetable oil. He likes tiny cars. I like cars you can live in. We already have a foreign subcompact, thanks, and we also have a ridiculously tiny two-wheeled vehicle. If I am going to get a vehicle, it's going to be one I can get laid in.


And oh yes, will be at Century ca. 7 pm for barbecue wings and also AIDS fighting, and if only Doppelcracker is bartending (I hope he will be), I will be drinking something ridiculous, probably Sidecars or Mai Tais. Provided it's not busy. In busy bars I just have a beer.

Oh I should figure out how to post a photo of Scout and Lizzie.

The several real actual Polish, non-Buffalo people of my acquaintance all laugh when I mention that Dyngus Day is a big deal in Buffalo. Also, none of them have ever encountered anything involving pussy willows. Therefore, I think this-all is just kind of a Buffalo thing. But still, it sounds fun. Every ethnicity in Buffalo has its own drinking holiday-- how great is that? This is a great city.
Not that I can ever participate in any of them, but the idea is great nonetheless.

I like my job, sort of, for the most part, but for two things: I am on a "part-time" schedule that has me working six days this week, and I never have holidays off and in fact have especially long days on holidays because all the senior people do have them off.
Also I can never get a Saturday or Sunday off, which means that (e:zobar) and I see one another in spans never longer than a couple of hours. Which, you know, some late-shift workers have it much worse, but, still, others being worse-off doesn't actually alleviate my pain at all. You know?


All right, i changed the colors here and have determined it's not the colors that make me inarticulate. I'm just inarticulate.