Book Club Recap

Last night I met up with the ladies from my book club to discuss Kindred. Our meeting was good. Just the right amount of "critical thinking" and bull shit! We sit around drink wine and eat as we discuss each book. I took a bottle of Tizzy to the meeting and it was enjoyed by all. I really love my cheap wine! I really enjoy my book club because we have a good mix of women. I've been in other groups that were nice, but I definitely think this mix of women is one of the best.
I have been trying to figure out how I'm going to incorporate books into my blog. I've decided that I'll definitely start listing my current book club selections as well as my own reviews. I should try to find one of those "what I'm reading now" widgets also. This might take me a while because I'm not very tech savvy. Ever wonder why all my pictures are in the same spot with no real formatting? 'Cause that's the only way I know how to do it baby!
The next bookclub selection is One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I have been forewarned that this is a dense book to get through. I'm reserving judgement.

Hairwolf in NOLA

I'm still getting big reactions to my newly shorn hair. They range from flat out dislike to extreme love. The only common reaction is surprise. Oh, well I'm still loving it right now. Besides Louisiana is really hot in the summertime. I'm looking forward to having a cooler head this summer.
There is a situation in my building right now. My building has a security gate and bars on the window. Anyone who has been to visit can tell you,we are more secure than Fort Knox. Well one of the tenants is sub-letting his apartment for the summer. The girl keeps leaving the security door unlocked. The landlord sent everyone an email stressing the importance of locking the door. Great... situation handled...NO! The girl keeps doing it. Now we all know who is doing it yet everyone gets the email because the landlord doesn't want to "name names". Finally I get tired of getting the scolding emails so I catch the girl, Olga, as she is leaving the building without locking the door. I give her an earful on locking the gate so I don't get raped/stabbed and most importantly so i don't get anymore emails. Turns out she is German and doesn't speak English well. Not only that, she is doing some crazy neo-hippy thing where she doesn't use electronics unless she has to. No tv, no computer (email), no radio and no car! Bitch is riding a bike around town in New Orleans heat and humidity. I pray she is not on a hippy "no deodorant" kick. Cause if she starts stinking up the place, it's on! She promised to lock the door from now on.

The Big Chop

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After>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Well I did it. I chopped off the fro. I am now the proud owner of less
than an inch of hair. This is not the first time I've started over
with my hair. Probably won't be the last. I'm still getting used to
the loss of "big hair". The best thing about this cut is that it took
me 2 minutes to do my hair when I got out of the shower. Here's a
picture I took this morning to email to The Minister.

Doing it Big Weekend

My baby brother and his friend from undergrad flew into town this weekend. I mentioned previously that this was gonna be his "do it big!" weekend. Well we did it big. As I type this I have the remains of a hangover that started on Saturday morning before my brother even made it into town. Friday night I hung out with the Lakeview Critic and Ms. Bonnie. I stayed out later than I intended and had to finish up last minute preparations for my weekend guests. So Saturday morning was spent with a headache and queasy stomach.
Fast forward to 3:30pm on Saturday when I pick Baby Brother up at the airport. When he gets into the car I can smell the alcohol already. Apparently he had a very pleasant flight that included large amounts of alcohol. He makes me stop at a dauquiri shop on the way to my house. Now I could have just gotten him one and not myself, but noone wants to drink alone right? So we have the dauquiris and get him settled in. Then Kiff's (brother's friend) plane gets in so we head back to the airport. The two of them spend the next couple of hours talking over each other and drinking the delicious Firefly Rasberry Vodka and lemonade drinks I made. At this point I'm already feeling like I am down for the count and it is only 8:30pm. They walk around to the bar up the street and meet up with some of my brother's friends that he worked with when he lived in New Orleans. I wisely use this time to take a nap. The rest of that day is a little fuzzy but I know Alyson came to be our sober driver and took us to one of our favorite hangouts to meet up and have a drink (like we needed anymore) with friends. Not sure how the night went cause I woke up at home in my own bed on Sunday at 4 am. My brother tells me he carried me in.
We spent most of Sunday playing kickball and once again Baby Brother and Kiff drink like sharks!! An amusing sidenote is that Kiff likes to refer to himself in the third person when he drinks. He has spent the whole weekend drinking so he has spent the whole weekend in third person. For example when he was ready to stop drinking on Sunday he informed me by saying "The Kiff can't feel his face!" Ahh good times, good times. Today I am feeling every one of my 31 years. When I left them this morning at 8 am they were mixing up bloodymarys.

My Favorite Book

I'm doing something a little new today. I have always been a big reader. I have been in love with books and the written word since I was a child. Anyone who knows me well, is aware that books take up a lot of space in my apartment and my heart. I read everything! It is not unusual for me to be in a bad mood or even a good mood and be able to trace its origins to the most recent book I read. With that said, I realized that I don't mention books or my favorite authors at all on this blog. Funny that such a large part of my life is never mentioned on here. Well it is time to change that. I'm not sure if I'll add one of those "what I'm reading now" widgets or if I'll just do a regular post on books I like. I've decided to start by telling you all about my favorite book. This is the book I give to people I really like. This is the book I grabbed when evacuating for hurricane Katrina. I forgot the last picture I took with my deceased father here in New Orleans, but I took Kindred. I simply love this book. I've read and gifted this book too many times to count. In the event of fire I would grab, Kindred, Mr. Bunny and my laptop on my way out of the door. (See almost forgot the picture again. I would grab Kindred, Mr. Bunny, laptop, and picture of deceased father) I'm sure by now you understand how much I love it. Now let me tell you why.

The name of the book is Kindred by Octavia Butller. The novel is about a modern (1976) black woman named Dana. She is transported back in time to the slavery era South to save a little boy. This boy turns out to be her ancestor. She is summoned over and over again whenever he, Rufus, is in mortal danger. She must save him to ensure her own eventual existence. Each summoning has her stay longer and longer. Each time she returns her young charge is older and more a product of his time. The book really explores love, hate, race, obsession, cruelty, forgiveness and worst of all fear. The characters are really well developed and Butler is a master when it comes to world building. Reading this book will really give you an understanding of daily life on a plantation. The author doesn't make the slave master's overly cruel or villanous. Instead her point is made in small accepted every day cruelties that made up life in that time. It makes you wonder what choices you would make in a given situation. You see the young boy grow to become a man that still reminds you of the child that steals your heart and compassion at the beginning, while making you dread the man he has become. I don't know how to explain it. Every time I read this book I want to hate him so much, but I never do. I find myself feeling sad for him and the other characters. The author does a really good job of subtly demonstrating a kind of commonality between the so-called good characters and bad-characters.

I can't say enough about how much I love this book. I highly recommend you pick up a copy of this book.

Drama Rama

I have been without internet access the last couple of days. I just recently replaced my modem, and when I say recently I mean like last week! Well after all that my internet goes out again. I start moving my cords around and troubleshooting to see what the problem could be and low and behold the problem is Mr. Bunny. Somehow he snuck into the back room where I keep my modem and router. I usually keep this door closed for a couple of reasons, the first of which is that I never clean it! The other is because my desk in there has a lot of cords connected. I keep my printer and all the routers and modems for my internet access in there. Mr Bunny is a notorious cord chewer so I keep him out of there. Apparently I didn't do a good job cause he has managed to chew one of the Ethernet cords to my new modem. Seriously this little bunny has cost me so much in replaced cords over the years that I could buy ten bunnies. He knows better than to go into my backroom.
On a not so new note The Minister has taken up residence on "Crack Island". Our conversation started out so innocently. I complained about getting wet in the rain on my way to my car after church. She says something like you're not sugar you won't melt. I reply that I happen to be very sweet (occasionally). Here's where the conversation is hijacked. She informs me that she doesn't know that because she doesn't have a son-in-law or grandchild from me to tell her this! Crazy.. of course I fire back with Mr. Bunny and she points out that he can't call her and tell her so his testimony is null and void! The conversation went completely off track from there with me ending up threatening to bring her an illegitimate grandchild within the year. ( As a minister she is very much about the marriage then baby carriage) Apparently she is getting desperate because she doesn't miss a beat when she says "Bring 'em!!" It's not like she really needs another grandchild. Between my two brothers she has five grandchildren. Regardless, I am so not going out to get knocked up anytime soon. I can barely afford to keep me and Mr. Bunny in entrees what would I do with a kid? Ridiculous.

Nothing Special Going On

I meant to post last night but I had internet connection issues. Randomly my wireless internet stopped working late wednesday night/early thursday morning. When I made it into the lab yesterday morning I called Bellsouth to find out what the deal is. I was told there was network outage that should be fixed by noon. Well when I made it home around six the internet was still out. After much complaining and arguing with the phone company it was decided that the problem was not with the network, but with my modem. Luckily I had a back-up modem to use. The only problem is that once I exchanged modems, none of my internet setting worked. I couldn't get on the internet through the ethernet chord and I couldn't connect the modem to my wireless router. Long story short I spent most of last night drinking Tizzy and figuring out how to re-do all of my internet setting for the wireless router and dsl modem. So not fun!!! Now I can connect to the internet wirelessly, but I can't get my Mail account to receive or send mail. I can still get the emails on my iphone, so I'm not too stressed. Sometime this weekend I'll have to figure it out. If all else fails I'll have to call my friend's husband and see if he can help me.
I don't really have any big plans for this weekend aside from "Newbie Haze" on saturday. It is a very juvenile tradition on the Hangovers. We are taking the team newbies to our team bar and drinking and socializing with them all night. It wouldn't be so bad, but they don't get a chance to recover the next day because that is the day of the league social. Should be fun, but I'm way to old to stay out randomly drinking all night. I think I'll put in an appearance for a couple of hours then head home to my comfortable bed.

Why is the rum always gone?

So my baby brother (read-27 year old, deputy sheriff) is coming to visit me Memorial Day weekend. I'm excited for the visit because he is one of my favorite people. That doesn't mean that I don't do shit to him, but it is all done with love and a sincere need to see that pissed of look on his face occasionally. Anyway, in preparation for his trip, he mailed me a bottle of a rum. It was a brand I haven't tried so he was being nice enough to mail me a bottle. I did have strict instructions "Don't be tastin' it all up before he gets here". All of that is moot because when I go to pick it up, the package is damaged. I got a soggy box of glass. No fabulous new rum for me. Well my brother had insured the box. So he calls the post office in CA to tell them what happened and they asked him to show them the box. Hello? The box was mailed to LA!! Fools.
Enough about that. It is almost kickball season. That is part of the reason for Jason's visit. He joined my kickball team, The Hangovers, even though he no longer lives here in NOLA. Anyone living in our home town understands why. There really isn't a lot of entertainment there. So he is on the team and will be flying in to play in about 4 games during the course of the season. It will give us a chance to hang out and Do it Big!!! And noone does it big like us. Hopefully while he's here he will pack up and take the rest of his shit that has been taking up space in my apartment for the last year and a half!

OOPS!!!

Me and my big mouth caused a little family drama on Mother's Day. I didn't mean to, but there was major drama. It all started last Thursday night. Actually as I look at my text message list I see it was between 11:50pm on Thursday night and 12:10 am Friday morning. Anyone who knows me well, is well aware that I'm in bed by 9pm and asleep by 9:30pm most nights. So at almost midnight I've been asleep for hours and I'm talking good drooling on my pillow already kicked the covers off sleep. So here is the text conversation that took place.

Cousin M: Me n my bf got married.
Me: Congrats. Tonight?
Cousin M: Yesterday
Me:Wow. R U Happy?
Cousin M: Yes.... very. My mom isn't talking to me right now.
Me: She will get over it. Congrats

That was the complete conversation. I went back to sleep until it was time for me to get dressed the next morning. So of course on Friday morning as I'm taking a shower it comes back to me. I rush through my shower and immediately dig out my phone to review the text conversation. Yep my way too young cousin is married. She is just 19 years old and just finished her sophmore year in college. Somehow I forgot to mention it to anyone most of the weekend. Fast forward to Sunday, I'm chatting it up to The Minister and she mentions that she has to call all of her sisters to wish them a happy Mother's Day. I don't know why, but it just slipped out. "I hope Aunt P (Cousin M's mom) is talking to Cousin M again." Of course my mother is wondering why she wouldn't be talking to her. So then I let it all out about the marriage. In my defense, who would assume it was a secret if she is sending out informative texts to people. People who were drooling on their own pillow and minding their own business I might add! Now my mother being the honesty police calls my Aunt P to find out what the deal is. Wait I'm getting ahead of myself. First there is a ten minute conversation in which I promise never to get married without giving my Mother the opportunity to be there. Even if it turns out to be a *gasp* sigh* "city hall wedding". Then there was a 15 minute three-way call to my Aunt J. Aunt J prides herself on being at the forefront of all family gossip. During this conversation we were informed that "No she had no idea Cousin M was married and furthermore Aunt P didn't mention it when they spoke this morning!" The situation has clearly escalated to code red. As the two of them are getting worked up, I'm starting to get that little tingle in the back of my neck. You know the one that says in braille "You fucked up fool!" So I send a desperate text to Cousin M that goes something like. I hope your marriage wasn't suppose to be a secret cause I told my Mom and she's on a fact finding mission. By the time I get this text out The Minister is calling Aunt P. Well turns out Cousin M is at her mom's house for the summer.
Drama rama. Aunt P is all butt-hurt that her "only daughter" didn't include her in her wedding. Of course Aunt P forgets that she eloped once upon a time long ago. This sparks a three-way conversation between me, the Minister, and Aunt P. Mostly the Minister and Aunt P, I was just kind of hoping the conversation didn't swing back to me. I can't remember all that was said, but I do recall promising once again that upon threat of a painful "size 7.5 stilleto pump to the neck" I would never get married without giving the Minister every opportunity to be there. The conversation finally ended with my aunt tearfully expressing her pain at not being at "her only daughter's wedding" even if it was to a peanut headed boy that she didn't really like! and the Minister quoting scripture about the benefits of marriage. I tuned out when the convo swung around to planning a reception for the family to meet "this boy Cousin M married".
You can't write this kind of shit. How was I to know that an unsolicited text message in the middle of the night was supposed to be kept secret? Jeeze

Congrats on Managing Not to Get Knocked Up

I did the obligatory sappy Mother's Day post earlier today, but the more I thought about it the more I felt this was needed also. This post is for all my single/married/engaged sisters who managed to get through another year without getting knocked up. I have said it before and I'll say it again, "being baby-free is neither free nor accidental!" We don't have a cool day set aside to recognize and praise the fact that we have been responsible in our family planning choices. They don't send us cards for our efforts or write sonnets about us. Don't get me wrong, being a mother is an important and hopefully informed decision that is beautiful and worthy of praise. I just think that many people forget that the choice of not reproducing is worthy of praise as well. Mothers are the primary teachers in society. I just want to recognize that being childless doesn't negate our ability to impart knowledge and utility to society. Not that we will never reproduce, just that it will be on our own schedule and at a time we deem appropriate. So to all my sisters in the fight.... Happy Non-Mother's Day! You made it another year without getting knocked up!

Happy Mother's Day

I know I had a post about The Minister the other day, but today is Mother's Day. So you are just going to have to put up with another mommy post. So here is a short list of things my mother taught me either by words or deeds. For brevity I won't repeat what I put in my previous post.

• Always tell my children (right now this is Mr. Bunny) the truth, even if it is a truth you don't want to believe.


• How to pray and meditate to center myself when everything else is chaos


• My opinion does count


• I'm lovable even when I have a stank attitude


• Don't listen to people that don't count


• Mom and friend are not mutually exclusive


• Family is important, but not at the expense of happiness


• I have the right to be selfish occasionally

This is a really brief list. Hope it gets you all thinking about your own dear old mommy. Don't forget to call her today.

The Minister Has Spoken

I have needed to write this blog for a while. I think maybe I just now started putting this concept to good use, so it is time for me to put it out into the blogsphere. With Mother's Day coming up I decided to share one of the best pieces of advice ever given to me by "The Minister" (I like to call her Mommy!) So without further ado here it is....Don't listen to people that don't count! Only you can decide who counts and who doesn't so be choosy in your selection. There are some people that will spend 90% of their time trying to cause problems for other people. They will never change and when you aren't around for them to cause problems for they will cause problems for someone else. I have recently invested too much time and effort being pissed off at one such shit starter that happens to be a professor in my department. I don't delude myself into thinking I'm special to him. He has a shitload of people that he is talking shit about and stirring up trouble for. I called The Minister just the other day to complain about him. She quietly listened to me rant for about 20 minutes, then gave me her loving motherly advice.

"You stop all that belly-aching, do what you have to do to graduate and tell him to kiss your shiny black ass! You know asses like yours don't just come to be. I gave you that kiss worthy ass! Now get off of it and be happy!"

You gotta love it. If you ever met The Minister you would understand. My mother is 5'4" of sweet southern charm masquerading as a Californian. She always has a smile and blessing for everyone she meets, but if you push her she will "put the pump to you". I think I'm the only one that ever induces her to use the word ass. I love being her problem child. I'm sure some of you needed to hear this little jewel from my Mom just as much as me. Lets hear the best advice your Mom ever gave you.

I Have Another Follower

I'm excited that I now have 2 official followers. Not one but two... count 'em! Much like the Jeffersons I am "moving on up!" I have had my original and most loyal follower since the very beginning, Squeelet. Although Squeelet is ridiculously funny and witty she hasn't chosen to blog about it. When she does I'm sure it will interesting. Now the "Squeel Inducing One" is joined by Shanster. I have to confess that I was a lurker on her blog for a while before I ever started my own blog. If you get a chance check it out. Pretty funny goings on over there. Not that I'm not ecstatic about my increase in followers but I still want more. I feel official. I hesitate to say it, but I think I'm definitely moving into expert range. I'm talking real expert not internet expert. I have two official followers I must be an expert right? I do know that there are some lurkers out there. Keep coming back and eventually you'll get sucked in. Even if you don't become a follower definitely leave a comment.

Life's A Beach

I love coming to Jacksonville. Nothing noteworthy or funny has
happened. I went with my cousin to go see Obsessed. It was pretty
good. Although the much hyped fight scene only lasted about 2 minutes
at the end of the film. Last night we went to this really cool
festival called World Of Nations. There were booths set up for
different countries and you could buy food learn about each country.
They gave you a passport booklet when you first arrived then you could
get a stamp in your passport for each country you visited. I'm
enjoying this stolen vacation of mine. I left my laptop at home on
purpose because I didn't want to do anything school related. I typed
this whole post on my phone.