Subway hates me

They stopped carrying swiss cheese and they're phasing out deli style subs. She said "but we'll start having 4" subs!" I wanted to say "how is that much different than your 6" sub?" but I was too heartbroken to speak.

surreptitiously

1. obtained, done, made, etc., by stealth; secret or
unauthorized; clandestine: a surreptitious glance.
2. acting in a stealthy way.
3. obtained by subreption; subreptitious.
[Middle English, from Latin surreptīcius, from surreptus, past participle of surripere, to take away secretly : sub-, secretly; see sub- + rapere, to seize; see rep- in Indo-European roots.]

Stealth isn't something I'm very good at, but its a lot of fun. Today's victims were Jeff and Rebecca, mostly Rebecca.

Today James and I braved the socially-acccepted-mailbox-color-perfection of the Village (the "planned" neighborhood where Rebecca and Jeff live) to dragonize their house.

We had only three dragons, next time I will try to bring many more. I hope they notice the newly planted Chinese serpents when they come home tonight; they're kinda small and few in number, but hopefully they won't fade too much into the environment. Also, hopefully, their neighbors won't pluck them from the front yard in a fit of self-righteous homogeny.

It was fun being random today. The sun is out and I'm in a good mood. I came home and picked up James who was sick today and we drove across town through 3 school zones and placed the party decorations in their front yard. It would be neat to see their reactions, hopefully it won't be too scary to come home to find dragons in the St. Augustine.

My previous, failed attempt at being stealthy

The last random secret mission I did was dropping off a Xmas cactus belted with helium balloons at their front door to wish R good luck in the Vegas marathon. Neither Rebecca nor Jeff were home, and I wanted R to find it when she got home from work.

Unfortunately right as I was leaving her house Jeff came home... I was in my car, but hadn't started it yet. I was trapped; my car was parked on the street a little down the road, but not far enough away for safety. I watched as he pulled up into the driveway and I was scared to start my engine for fear he would hear the engine and look up. He put the motorcycle in his garage, looked at the front door, saw the balloons, looked back in the garage to do something else with his bike, looked back at the balloons, then looked around to see who'd left it - spotting me. I was devastated that my Tyr. Rex method of invisibility (if you sit there unmoving, they can't see you) didn't work.

But today I wasn't caught at the scene of the crime. So we'll see if they get home tonight and immediately figure out who dragonized their yard, if they even see them. If they don't see them, maybe the dragons will grow.

Thanksgiving 2006

I found this photo on my phone: its Sam jumping on the trampoline with Meena. He'll kill me when he finds out I took his photo. Thanksgiving so far has been an annual "game day" where we go get Sam and try to spend the day playing games, online or not, and we always start too late and don't get enough game playing done before we're all yawning and have to take Sam home.

One of the reasons we don't have enough time to get games played is because we tend to show up at Rebecca and Jeff's because she always makes the best food and she keeps inviting us. This year Katherine helped by frying a turkey (which unfortunately James couldn't eat because it was fried in peanut oil) but it was really really good. Rebecca made corn pudding, a Mexican dessert, which I'd never had before and it was also really good. I told R that I want to learn how to make it so she lent me the cookbook, which surprises me. She likes to print out her own versions of recipes that always seem to be missing some detail or another to discourage you from believing you can make food as well as she can. A smart strategy in a way, unless of course she ever gets tired of people leeching her grub.

James and Spider playing video games

It was really cold that night, but James was warm. Spider makes a good blanket. Right now James is playing WoW with Sam. They're "dark elves". Sam is making leather goods (he's learning a craft) and James is jumping in the air and running in circles.

Its likely I'll try out the game, but I would want to be a gnome character, and I played with the model viewer and they have one I like, but I want James to find the gnome city and make sure there aren't a million gnomes that look just the same because I don't want to look like everyone else, like I do in ffxi.

Spider!

This is Spider, being cute. And fierce.

musical guest: yoda

This has been on my windowsill since I started working for the city 4 years ago. I have a nice big window through which I can see how beautiful it is outside when I'm stuck inside. People always tell me how lucky I am to have an office with a window, but honestly, I'm looking forward to the cube they're moving me into at the end of the year.

Another thing you can see from my window besides the blue skies is Municipal Court, which is across the street. Sometimes when Pat has to do maintenance on the database that runs the electronic doors, the doors lock shut for that brief time and we can watch people try to get into Municipal Court. They yank on the door, peer in the window, look around... Tim's labelled those moments as Pat's megalomaniac moments because she'll sit there and watch them as she's locked them out of the buildings.

Me, at Carnaval

Missy took this picture of me. I like it.

To Be Worthy of Maynard

I spend a lot of time thinking about whether I am or ever will be worthy of certain things in my life. Worthy of the goodness of my friends, my family, the man who loves me, the miracle of children, the life that I live, the love of a God that I have yet to understand. Generally the answer to myself is no.

But then there are moments like the one I am experiencing now, simulataneous with a "manic phase", where I can feel my brain on fire, where I wait impatiently for that one trial that will likely kill me. I want to stand in the rain today. I want to shout at the top of my lungs and threaten the universe. I want to fly too close to the sun. It is all about one significant blaring moment that I know is coming.

Posterity laughs at Icarus, but in the end he will laugh last.

Carnaval

I don't have a whole lot of pictures bec I used my phone as a camera which was decent, but wasn't able to take really quick pictures, so things that were moving didn't turn out. I expect my friends who had real cameras will be mailing around the ones they took soon and I'll forward the better ones.

This is me, in the car on the way to Claire's hotel (my friend Claire who is REALLY into carnaval rents a hotel suite next to the convention center). Terry (Tamashii) who was in the front seat of the car with his wife said, "what are you doing back there?" me: "taking pictures", he said "are you taking pictures of yourself? (laugh)" me: "yes"


So now you know how incredibly goofy I look. I took a picture of me in my favorite sunglasses too, even though they're boy glasses, but they're the ones that are part of the Windsurfing lesson by Olivier story.


My friend's husband Jeff (who is 6'7") decided to go as the Jolly Green Giant. This is him being painted by Rebecca in Claire's hotel bathroom. The bathtub was the staging point for many people getting painted and before Jeff it was covered in blue paint, splattered randomly on the sheets they'd draped on the walls, on the ceiling and floor. Rolls of towels and bits of bandages were everywhere and the occasional splatter of red paint. Someone said "it looks like the scene of a smurf murder"

This is my friend Missy, Tamashii's wife, as Space Girl. She was ecstatic how voluptuous she was in her outfit and made a point to tell everyone :p She's adorable btw. Blonde in RL, one of the prettiest people I know.

This is my friend Katherine who went as "my date" (her husband didn't want to go either) Katherine is amazing and beautiful. She does Ironmans and is my hero. I told her she should start a company called "body by Katherine". Ironmans if you dont know the details are triathalons with a 2.4-mile swim, then a 112-mile bike ride, and finally, a marathon (26.2 miles), all done one right after the other. Anyway, Katherine's skirt was red sheer so you could see her shorts underneath which had the words "Rodeo Trash" written on the butt, and she wore these beautiful cowboy boots that I wish I had a photo of.

This is a picture of me in my "costume" (a mask, corset, poof skirt thing, fishnets and combat boots, which I'm not sure qualifies as a 'costume') standing next to a guy in a very strange ensemble. He had a UT shirt on, horns, women's make up, silky white briefs, stockings and heels. Btw, you're lucky (or not) you're getting any pictures of me. I think I look like a doof :p and I've since learned that the corset/skirt combo I wore is incredibly common and seems to be the starter set that The Bazaar must make a mint on.

And finally, Claire, my beautiful artist friend.
This is her in her hotel room, pre-headdress. She made her husband Jeff (Rebecca's Jeff calls him 'mini-me', even though Claire's Jeff is like 6'1") a costume with fibre optics... her costume and his were themed as aztec gods. When I get a hold of the photos everyone else took with real cameras, I'll post good photos of them because the ones I took of their completed costumes, my no-flash camera phone was no good.

After carnaval we went to Kerby Lane Cafe for pancakes and everyone mostly wore regular clothes covering their party clothes, but Rebecca's Jeff's newly shaven head was still green and he's insisting they discriminated against him since the waiter brought all our food and not his. He had to eat his dinner after we were mostly done with ours. So there's still bigotry even in educated towns, especially against green people.