There's a first time for everything.

I'm sure it's bad form to say this, but I'm kind of glad that I'm working with visually impaired teens this afternoon; they won't see how badly I've drooled all over myself.

My follow-up dental appointment today, instead of being the tooth-saving, happy, pain-relieving godsend I had hoped for, has turned out to be the beginning of HELL.

I've never cried at the dentist's before today. I've never had the anesthetic completely numb me but still let through the pain. I had to leave without them even doing any work on me. The filling I was there to get fixed is apparently not the main cause of the pain. Just a stream of air on the next-door-neightooth was enough to elicit a full-body jerk away. A second shot farther back in the mouth made no difference. I called the endodonist's office from my dentist's chair. I've an appointment for evaluation Monday. They had an opening Thursday morning, but that corresponds with my organization's big fund raiser; I'm one of the speakers.

Let's hope my mouth un-numbs by then.

Meanwhile, both my tomato-zucchini soup AND my super-protein chocolate shake are mostly wiped from my right chin.

I didn't have a straw.

Oh, Hai.

Please pardon the posting post World Beer Festival. Cause 2 oz servings really add up. Jesus, am I blogging under the influence aGAIN?

Um, yeah.

So the best part, and there were many good parts, was that I found a brewery from the town where I grew up. Awesome, right?

Well, imagine on top of that the one of the booth people was actually a guy I went to fucking high school with. Almost 20 years ago, because YES, I'm that old. I didn't recognize him at first, but the second time I went back I just had to ask: "Is your name Dave?" "Maybe" "Dave Lastname? It's Stew! We went to high school together!"

He put a temporary tattoo on me. It runs; not so high of quality.

So bizarre. I had to call my friends Nemoid and JJ (both happy commenters) and tell them. I swear it's like the 20th reunion is at bay and I'm actually kind of interested in going back.

Right now, though, I've had too many 2 oz beers to make sense.

A man named Malu cabbed us home.

Oh, and my ex-boyfriend from college's brewery was there too. I called him when I found out. It was weird.

UPDATE: The picture, incidentally, was just some random guy I went up to, not the high school person. I met a lot of people yesterday.

Speaking of drought...

I just found this video timeline graphic. (What would you call it? A snapshot active time-lapsed map??)

Meanwhile, according to neighborhood listserv reports, the city is wasting tons of water.

For at least 2 days, the water department has been flushing water out
of the hydrant at Carolina and Pershing onto the street.

As I schlep big buckets of water out of my shower into the garden,
and our family refrains from flushing our toilets when appropriate to
conserve this precious resource, is it appropriate for the city to
dump water by the thousands of gallons at this time?

Another neighbor responded:

One other year when we were low on water, they were flushing the hydrant on
my block. I called the water department thinking that surely this was a
mistake. I was told that they are required by the State to flush the pipes at a
certain time each year.
I asked if they could do it at another time since we were low on water. I
was told that it had to be now since that is when the State told them to do it.

That really chaps my ass.

UPDATE: Another neighbor who's in the know checked out what was going on:

In this case, the hydrant was running due to sewer from the creek
getting into a broken sewer main. The maintenance crew has made the
repairs. As soon as the Stormwater team makes a check, they will give
the OK to stop the flushing. This was scheduled to happen around noon
Friday.

Whee!

I've got some renewed excitement going on here at the ranch. I've got the a.m. off today to make up for the crazy ride I've been on, and I'm taking good advantage of it. Ran some errands this a.m. and then went to my favorite place for breakfast around. Picked up some goodies there, too, and then on my way home stopped at Barnes Supply for some brown crowder peas (At less than 1/2 the price than that website, by the by).

This fucking drought has left me avoiding the garden as much as I can. Yesterday I noticed my swiss chard, prized specimen it was, is now flattened to the soil, wilted.

New Roommate and I continue to conserve water, and I toss whatever graywater we collect on various parts of the garden. But DAMN. I have so many things I want to do now that water would really help with. It's a pain in the ass to lug water from my bathroom out to the yard. (My veggies are ZESTFULLY clean!)

For instance, I'm revamping the zinnia/raspberry bed from last year. I've got a layer of cardboard down, and I would LOVE to start layering it up. I suppose I could do that without water, but those crowder peas would really be cute there.

And I need to get the garlic in. I'm not to sure where to put it.

Hm. Garden planning must happen.

School Lunch again

I'm cracking myself up here with the school lunches. The middle school I'm in today had much more palatable and healthy options.

Here's the list. I've italicized my choices.

Options:

Chef Salad
Iceberg Salad
Green beans
Baked apples
Orange
Pizza
Double Dogs (2 hotdogs)
Corn Dog Nuggets
Chocolate pie
Chocolate cake
Chocolate Milk
Strawberry Milk
Milk

Cost: $3.50

Notes: How could I not get me some corn dog nuggets? The green beans were canned but not fattied up. The salad was as expected: bland. The apples were good. Like having pie without the crisco. I knew I wanted chocolate milk, but I'd never had strawberry, so I tried it. Not bad, but not as good as the strawberry Quik I'd had as a child.

Because I've been working crazy hours

Assuming anyone regularly reads here at all, please just drop me a comment, lurker or not, so that I feel the love, mmmkay? It can be apropos of nothing; I certainly don't make much sense most days.

Oh, speaking of non-sequitors, I had school lunch today for the first time in a couple of years. It's bad.

Choices were:
Chicken Nuggets/biscuit
"Spicy" Cheese "Enchiladas" served with "salsa"
French Fries
Iceberg Lettuce (with dressing, presumably)
Pizza Hut
Grilled chicken breast on a salad
Apple Juice
Milk
Sports Drinks

I ended up with the one with the most quotes. I don't trust a lot of meat, so I tend to go for the veggie options, quite often.

School Lunch Review
Of all of the adjectives in Spicy Cheese Enchiladas with Salsa, only cheese was accurate. Call me impressed; it was actual cheddar cheese, with some very mild peppers and a couple of onion pieces, wrapped up in a flour tortilla. The accompanying sauce was a marinara. On the whole, it was a mild, perfectly pleasant (though oddly shaped) quesadilla. I could identify each and every ingredient.

I also got french fries, in part to see whether they were as bad as the ones we used to get. They were.

Chocolate milk, lowfat. YUM.
Diet Pepsi, purchased in the Teacher Workroom

Total Cost:
$3.10

Barcelona, Society, Baking, and Men.

Last night I dreamed about being back in Barcelona again. I don't remember how I ended up there, but I had all sorts of adventures as soon as I realized I was there. I often dream about BCN. It's where I had the happiest period of my life. No worries, much friendship...I just FLOWED. When I was sad, I was sad. When I was happy, I was happy. I didn't have to think about things. They just were.

So I do. I dream about BCN. There's a recurring dream that's kind of boring, and then the one last night was new.

In fact, I went to a new section of BCN that hadn't existed before.

I liberated a fancy coat a woman had left hanging in an industrially-green room lined with cubbyholes. It was two parts. Leather and Cashmere. Oh, and fur. That makes 3, doesn't it? That coat led the women in the section of BCN I'd never explored to think I was part of this extremely highly-regarded (snooty) subset of society figures. A Wearer Of The Coat, perhaps. Then I met a young woman from the study abroad program at the private U near me, and she showed me the rock climbing wall/park. I climbed it a little bit. I didn't like her.

Then I noticed our Marianne and her Sprog had moved to BCN. Marianne was still holding down her job here in D-town, but worked from home. In her spare time, she had opened up a store. It's hard to explain the store. There was a LOT of detail I could tell. Basically it was this upscale, yet homey store that was filled with gorgeous food items Marianne had prepared. Among other things.

I especially remember mini-chocolate chip cookies tied with a green bow in sets of two. They were about the size of a quarter each, and my emotional response was "Oh, GOOD. Marianne is doing America proud," because the presentation was beautiful, and these were just the samples, people. She had also made cupcake-sized concoctions with mini-strawberries held together with some kind of pâte à choux, which somehow had left the strawberries raw AND the pastry crisp. Ah well, BCN is really a place that welcomes the surreal and modernist, so maybe that does make sense. The whole city was agog; it was by far the most fashionable store ever. It was a warm off-white/yellowish/greenish inside. It was more Foster's Market than Guglehupf in its design. (Sorry to those of you who aren't local--imagine warm and cozy and hip compared to glass and steel and hip)

Things have fallen apart with that boy situation I may have alluded to a few weeks ago. CRASH. It's the right call, but it still bums me out. Sigh. High highs create low lows. If anyone wants details, email me.