It's Kinda Dark Outside

Ok, it's not dark outside, at least not yet, but I went to the barn last night after a long and kinda train-wrecky day at work and it got pitch black out there before I could walk down to the paddocks, and there I was stumbling around in the dark, following Topper's voice and using my cell phone to make sure I didn't sprain an ankle.

Fuck, man, it's fall!

On one hand, I'm really glad it's here--cooler weather! College football! Not too hot to eat Italian anymore! I can wear layers!--and on the other hand, I'm freaked out. This usually happens every year when I realize the end of the year is within sight.

This is just a short little thing to say I have NOT forgotten about the rest of the Colorado trip! I will post more about it. At this rate, the final posts will be up almost two months after the trip itself. Two months: That's a motherfucking 1/6 of the year. Wow. I'm lazy. That and I keep forgetting I have to do that when I'm at home and I can hook up the external hard drive where all the pictures are. That and I'm lazy.

On another note: NaNoWriMo starts soon and I will be participating. I know I've said this before, but consider it a PSA: I will post everything on a blog again, but you must have my approval before you log on and read it. Last thing I need is someone telling my editors what a genuinely shitty writer I really am. Leave a comment if you want to get added onto the list.

I also just want to post about ice cream for a second. This little shop opened up here in Fort Worth where you choose from about a dozen fresh-baked cookie flavors and about a dozen Blue Bell ice cream flavors and create your own ice cream sandwiches. Not only is Sweet Sammies the most genius thing I've heard since . . . well, maybe ever, but each sandwich also only costs $2.25. I am cheap and love dairy and baked goods and this is blowing my ever-loving mind. I'm not ashamed to say I went there twice in four days last week.

I'm just letting everyone know right now that I want a franchise for Christmas this year. Start saving your quarters now, friends.

Also? We just added comments onto our website at work, and I think I've already racked up the most hate comments. (It's like two total, but still. And "hate comments" might be inflammatory, but that's why I'm an objective journalist.) I'm glad we have comments, finally--yay for the 21st century!--but I'm also hoping some day to get some real comments going, some discussion, some talk. Come on, readers. I defend you and your intelligence all the time when I'm talking to others who know nothing about journalism. Don't prove me wrong, here.

On High

Tomorrow morning Dan and I head out to Colorado for a solid week of beer tastings, reading books, cycling, eating and enjoying the fact it's not 104 with a 110 heat index outside. Holla atcha altitude!

For those who are interested, the Leadville 100 bike race will be next Saturday, Aug. 14, and I will be live-tweeting the whole thing because fuck, what else am I supposed to do? No way in hell I'm riding that thing. I will be bundled up, reading books and watching riders, waving a giant TCU Horned Frogs flag so Dan can find me in all the crews (side note: Ranked No. 7 in the nation pre-season, fuck yes!).

I will also be making random tweets during the whole trip because I easily amuse myself that way. The computer is coming with, so if I get the chance I may upload photos/post while I'm away, but no guarantees.

I just looked at our list of possible things to do while we're out of town, and two-thirds of the list is restaurants/microbreweries. We're chic like that.

My Thighs Still Hurt

I moved over the weekend because the good Lord didn't give us three-day weekends to actually have us enjoy ourselves. Nuh-uh, no way. Three day weekends are there to give us a false sense of security about what we can attempt when our weekend is longer (now with 50% more weekend!), and this one falling so nicely at the end of the month meant it coincided with my lease ending.

So yet again I mostly moved by myself, since Dan's work schedule got shifted around a bit and he also got shafted with having to work the holiday. This isn't a huge surprise--he often got assigned to work holidays at the various papers he's been at, since he's generally the youngest person working there and it's a whole hierarchy system. But the move meant a lot of lugging my things down stairs, loading it into trucks, driving it and unloading it in the hottest weather of the year so far.

After borrowing two trucks from two families and returning trucks and spending time in laundromats trying to get smoke smells out of my clothes (so glad I no longer live next door to a smoker!) and drinking way too much Diet Coke and not eating enough to keep from getting lightheaded and having lots and lots of anxiety and dragging my sister and Dan into everything, I got it done.

As I mentioned a while back, I'm really excited to be living with these two lovely ladies who are my new roommates and the new (old) house. There are beat-up hardwood floors, a shower in a giant stand-alone tub, chipped paint and a rather endearing child's landscape in colored chalk on one of my bedroom walls. There's also a dog, and while Fenway doesn't trust him, he also boldly walks by and can stop the dog in his tracks with an Evil Eye that is admirable.

Things are still busy with life in general, but that's OK. Busy is fine by me. It keeps me from thinking about how fucking hot this forsaken state is, because damn, it's fucking hot. (Yes, friends, it is time to listen to me whine about the heat again! Yay!) But on the upside, I have swimsuits and a gym membership at the Y, which has two pools, and a box of ice cream sandwiches in the freezer.

Close Neighbors

It's official: I will be moving out of my one-bedroom apartment, where Fenway and I have been living on our own since last May, and will be rejoining the world of roommates come the beginning of June, the world of neighbors on the other side of walls who you have to actually get along with and all that shit.

Just to rehash, I signed the one-year lease on this apartment about a week before the first round of furloughs were announced at work. I even went through the trouble of asking the publisher if he thought we were going to have any financial issues, and he said no, so I signed and then BAM, paycheck cuts. Then two more rounds. We've been (knock on wood, cross fingers) without furloughs so far this year, but I don't trust it all.

Also, I've put a student loan on semi-deferment, and my grace period on that is up at the end of May, so I'll be looking at higher bills. It made sense to look for a cheaper place. I'm moving in with two other lovely ladies my own age who are renting a house, and I'll have more on that topic later.

As much as I adore living on my own, moving will be a good thing. I won't be stressed the fuck out about money all the time quite as much, and as of today, my AC in this little old apartment has gone out for the second time in the past three weeks. That shit's just not acceptable in this state. It's hot in here, and I can sit around in a tank top and shorts, but Fenway's stuck in his heavy fur coat. He's a snob like that.

Like I said, more to come later. For now, I'm going to spend the night at Dan's, where it's cooler, since the property manager won't do anything after 5 p.m. on a Friday unless the temperature is over 90.

Westward Migration

My dad officially retires from the Air Force after a 27-year (I think) career as an officer, primarily as a pilot, on July 2. Then it appears my mom and my dad will be packing up their stuff from the DC suburbs and coming to the ridiculously hot sprawl of North Texas. Holla!

Dad got a job offer from L3 Communications, based in Greenville, which is north of Dallas, and he's finishing negotiations and details right now, but it looks like he and Mom are poised to come back here later this summer. I never lived in this area prior to going to TCU, and my parents haven't lived up here either (although both spent a good amount of their growing-up years near San Antonio, which is where most of the extended family is). I'm really looking forward to having them nearby but not too close--I think they'll be a bit more than an hour away, which is just dandy by me.

In Fort Worth, everything with the apartment has more or less settled down. The AC is still going strong, the roof doesn't leak anymore (which is great, because some recent thunderstorms have been brutal), and they retreated the floors with stuff for the smell. It only kinda helped. I bought some cat urine neutralizing stuff from Petsmart, but that only kinda helped too. Dan and I even cleaned behind and under the fridge (soooooo gross) and I scrubbed down the kitchen. Eh. I just live in a kind of funky smelling apartment, I guess. There's worse things, like the fire ant fiasco at the last place. Fire ants that crawl up the wall and into your bed? So not cool.

I fly home in two weeks for the retirement ceremony/celebrations, and I'm looking forward to that. I'm also looking forward to getting shoes back on the pony so he can be worked again--Topper's been doing well, but I want the po worked back up and fit so I can lease him out and not deal with all this stress over juggling two horses and a full-time job.

One thing I'm not really looking forward to is the insane summer heat, which is already coming on strong. It's supposed to be 98 for a few days this week, and next week too, and I'm afraid it's only going to get hotter from there. When the coolest days are in the low 90s, there's something wrong. Who knows, my parents may move here and I may move away searching for a better climate. I figure no matter where I go, I have a fair shot of getting a journalism job with chances of getting laid off. If I can't have job security, then I need to not have a place where you need to run an AC unit or risk heat stroke and death.

Anyone in Oregon looking for a roommate?

Ballpark, Boston-Style

It's been almost a week, but let me take a dorky sports-moment to tell about the Red Sox-Rangers game Dan and I went to last Sunday.

That whole week had been cool and nice, so I thought we'd have good weather for the Sunday afternoon game. The tickets came from work--we had four season tickets to the Rangers, and when they were announced back in the spring, I asked for two tickets to some Red Sox game. This was the last game of a three-game series, and I have been looking forward to this for several months.

Dan and I got totally geeked out for the event. I went and bought baseballs on Friday, so we could go to batting practice before the game and hopefully get autographs. Dan bought a giant bag of roasted peanuts, and we picked up drinks. We each wore a Boston shirt, and I wore the hat I bought at Fenway. We arrived about 10 minutes before noon (game had a 2:05 start), and then stood outside the gates until 12:30 before they let us in. Don't trust everything you read on the Internet! We found a schedule that said we could get in at noon, but that didn't happen.

What did happen was at least half of the people going to the game showed up in Red Sox paraphernalia. Once we got in, the teams were doing some easy field work, and there were four times as many people near the visitors' dugout waiting for autographs as at the Rangers' side. We got spaces on the rail and had our baseballs and Sharpies in hand, but no one really came over except one player, David Pauley, who very graciously signed EVERYTHING that people handed him. He worked down the rail, then took a seat on the bumper and let people keep bringing him things.

After a while even Pauley disappeared, and the security guys urged us to take our seats. We did, and we were in great seats, just past first base, but right smack in the sun. I could feel my skin burning. Soooo thankful Dan convinced me to wear a T-shirt instead of the halter top I'd been planning on.

The game was good; the Sox won, 7-2, and I got to see everyone that I really loved. I didn't get the chance to confer with Ellsbury about our future nuptials, but I did get to see him, as well as Youkilis and Pedroia and Ortiz and Papelbon (who I call P-Bon). It was funny to see all the little tics in person, like Youkilis and his goofy batting stance, and Papelbon's pitching. (The pitching is hilarious. He takes this huge sign, rolling his shoulders down, then his head--while down--rolls around to look at the batter, he breathes out again, gives them the Look of Doom, and then pitches. Love it. It made me laugh.)

My knees got sunburned, and I ate way, way too many peanuts. We only got one signature. I was sweaty and gross afterward. But it was fun, and even if we had paid for those tickets, it was a helluva lot cheaper than if we'd gone to Fenway, which is where I last saw the Sox.

Intimidation, High School Style

Around May I decided my new work out of choice would be running stairs. Since the beginnging of 2008, I decided I needed to work out at least three times a week, both for my health (I run so I can eat donuts) and for my sanity (oooh, nature! kinda!) and started going running in this neighborhood Dan used to live in.

Once it started getting really hot it was miserable for running. I'm not a chipper person who can get up at 6 a.m. and run before work; I feel shitty for the rest of the day when I work out in the morning. I work out immediately after work, because once I get home, I'm probably not going to move from my couch.

I gave up running and started running stairs instead. I go run dozens of times up and down at the local high school, which is about a quarter mile from work--there's only 24 steps, do I have to do a lot of reps. (Like 80 reps . . . yeah, a lot. Boring) I did reps at the TCU stadium for a while, until the temperature got over 100 degrees and the temperature inside that miserable metal-and-concrete stadium got over 110. That's insane.

Today I went out to run stairs at the high school and there were dozens of football players on the field and high school students EVERYWHERE. Kids hanging out in the parking lot, kids on the steps leading down to the track that I run, kids in the shade under the trees. I couldn't bear the thought of going and sweating and looking insane (anyone who runs steps so many times looks insane) in front of all these high school kids. There were all these high school boys down on the field, and all these tiny, tan, pony-tailed high school girls everywhere else.

I've been out of high school for seven years. I am a successful person with a job, a driver's license and a car, two degrees, and a cell phone plan I pay for all on my own. (Even if I sometimes pay it two months late.) I should not be intimidated by the thought of being grody and sweaty in front of a bunch of high schoolers.

And yet I was, I went to Dan's neighborhood and went running instead. Good thing it was relatively cool outside today.

Heated Discussion

From the National Weather Service about today, Friday, Aug. 1:

"Late Afternoon: Isolated showers and thunderstorms. Mostly sunny and hot, with a high near 102. Heat index values as high as 108. "

Oh, it's only a high of 102. Puh-leese. That's nothing. Tomorrow is supposed to be up to 106, and Sunday up to 107 before it cools back down to 101 on Monday and Tuesday.

There are so, so many things wrong with all of this. And yes, I realize I live in Texas, and I cam here voluntarily--no one threatened to hammer nails into my eardrumbs with turnips or anything unless I moved here after grad school. But I think I got spoiled last summer, when it rained and rained and rained and would not stop and flooded and killed small children.

The sick thing is that when it's 100, it really doesn't feel that hot because it can get so much hotter. I work out after work usually three days a week, going to a local high school and running stairs, and yeah, it's gross, it's hot, but you're working out anyway and you expect to sweat. So even if I'm working out in 105-degree weather, it doesn't feel that bad.

Even going out to the barn after working out and adding a layer of hay dust, stable dirt and horse hair to the sweat doesn't feel that bad.

What really feels bad is the work day. It's gross to get up and go to work in the morning and you're sweating just from walking from your car into the building. (And it's not a long walk, a huge trek across some forgotten stretch of tarmac. It's maybe 50 feet.) I feel disgusting, wearing a skirt and heels and cute blouse and having to worry about sweat marks when walking from my car into buildings for interviews.

This has been the worst summer of my life in terms of heat, barring the one summer right after college where Dan was at the Lance Armstrong Foundation in Austin and I was nannying and waiting to move to Boston. That summer was brutal, but I was charged with watching an 8-year-old, so we could go spend the day at the pool and I could wear tank tops and gym shorts all summer.

That was actually my first summer ever spent in the North Texas heat. Despite going to four years of school here, I never spent a summer here. I always went home (aka where my parents lived at the time, which was Alabama and Virginia), and then my summer internship in grad school was here in Fort Worth but I don't think it was quite this bad. (Plus, it was an unpaid internship, so if they'd made some comment about what I was wearing I would have just laughed at them. You don't own me!)

When I was a kid we lived in New Mexico and it's totally true--it's a dry heat, and it makes a helluva difference. I spent all day outside playing in the summer and was fine. Sweaty and gross, but in no danger of heat stroke, like here. We lived in San Antonio, about four hours south of Fort Worth; bad, yeah, but not tooooo bad. And Florida--humid, muggy, yes, but there was a thunderstorm almost every day that cooled everything off. Ahh, the perks of living on the water.

I guess maybe I just have a crappy memory for heat stuff. I really don't remember ever being grossly hot as a kid, whereas as an adult, I have semi-scary memories of nearly passing out on a bike ride and feeling nauseous after working out. (That's why I've relocated from the university to the high school: TCU's stadium was one, giant, aluminum-and-whitewashed mixing bowl to work out in, and it got sweltering in there. The high school is much smaller, with lots of natural grass and dirt to absorb some of the heat.)

Then again, I don't remember ever being really cold as a kid, either, and I spent an entire winter and a half bitching in Boston. Hmm.

Hey, check it out! Only 100 right now in the late afternoon with a 104 heat index! So glad it cooled off in time to go home.

I'm spending my evening in a movie theater, where it's cool and dark.