I got my first speeding ticket yesterday, 40 in a 30 (which is wrong, it was more like 35, but they must have been meeting quota because there were three cars and they nabbed another one right after me). My luck has finally run out.
This is the fifth time I've been stopped for speeding, and the first time I've actually been written a ticket. While I've received and paid multiple parking tickets, for some reason I hoped this day would never come.
The first two times I was stopped were during my senior year in high school. The first cop was nice, the second one was really angry but let me off anyway for some reason. He asked me who my parents were and I told him, but as far as I know I'd never seen the guy before. Maybe he knew of my father, since he's on the fire department in my hometown and has been for most of his life.
The third time I was pulled over, I was leaving my cousin's house in a hurry on my way home from college. He didn't live there anymore, and there was no real reason for me to drive by, but I had to pass through the town anyway, so I drove by it for old times' sake. It was dark, the house was empty, and I got a little creeped out, so I was going too fast, but I still got let off with a warning.
When I lived in Indiana, I was somewhat known for getting lost easily while driving. When I moved to Texas, I got a lot better for some reason, but one particular day, on my way home from work, I got lost in my own neighborhood and was so frustrated I was zooming around trying to find my way back and got nabbed. Again, just a verbal warning and a "Be more careful."
Well, this time in addition to the "Be more careful" I was handed a ticket. Luckily, it says I can avoid paying full price by taking a driving safety course, but it's almost as much as just paying the ticket. Still, it gets the moving violation "dismissed", which I guess would save me any raise in insurance premium, so it's probably worth it.
Let me know what you guys think of the new layout.
Sunday, January 28, 2007
Thursday, January 25, 2007
Putting it down
I finished reading Notes from Underground a couple days ago, and I can't really recommend this book to anyone. It was relentlessly depressing from beginning to end. I've actually read two other books from start to finish since I started it. I honestly knew nothing about it before I picked it up, and what I thought I knew was wrong. It's all about a Russian who hates himself and everyone else, told from his perspective as he tries to bring everyone around him down to his level and fails. If that sounds like a gripping read, go ahead and try it along with a couple anti-depressants. At least it's short, not that it helped me. If this had been a long book I would have abandoned it, which I almost never do.
In happier news, I have my first (used) laptop to play with. So old it can't run Windows XP! 128 megs of RAM! One USB port! CD-Rom only! Totally worth the asking price, which was "Get it out of here"!
In happier news, I have my first (used) laptop to play with. So old it can't run Windows XP! 128 megs of RAM! One USB port! CD-Rom only! Totally worth the asking price, which was "Get it out of here"!
Saturday, January 06, 2007
Texas wildlife
I'd been living in Texas a couple of years when my friend Lyndon, a native Texan, first told me about the Texas barking spider. People outside of the state have generally never encountered or even heard of one. This rude critter has the habit of crawling around under the dinner table and making a sound suspiciously like that of a person passing gas. When I told my roommate Phil about this, he was skeptical, but every once in a while we have to chase one off to eat in peace.
Mexican food especially seems to bring them out, and in my time here we've come across some mighty fine Mexican dishes, like tacoritos, as well as everybody's favorites, from burritos to fajitas to tacos. A few months ago, I stopped eating much besides salads for weeks on end and managed to lose a couple belt notches. Coincidentally, we didn't hear a whole lot of barking in that time, but I have a feeling these spiders are seasonal. Hopefully, we've heard the last of them, but if they're anything like the sugar ants that still turn up around the drains occasionally, I wouldn't count on it.
Mexican food especially seems to bring them out, and in my time here we've come across some mighty fine Mexican dishes, like tacoritos, as well as everybody's favorites, from burritos to fajitas to tacos. A few months ago, I stopped eating much besides salads for weeks on end and managed to lose a couple belt notches. Coincidentally, we didn't hear a whole lot of barking in that time, but I have a feeling these spiders are seasonal. Hopefully, we've heard the last of them, but if they're anything like the sugar ants that still turn up around the drains occasionally, I wouldn't count on it.
Friday, January 05, 2007
Talking baseball
I've never been terribly good at sports, which is probably the reason I have so little interest in them. In fact, the last year I played baseball (7th grade, maybe?), I had a batting average of .000 posted for the world to see. I can still remember checking the sheet of paper tacked up on the wall of the clubhouse and thinking to myself, "This is my clue to quit," which I did.
I had a zero batting average that year because I got scared of the ball, but I hadn't always been. I started playing Pee Wee League ball as an outfielder, and like most of my peers, I got bored and didn't pay attention very well while standing alone as the sun went down, waiting for something to happen. But some way or another, I eventually became backup catcher, and I not only made some good plays, I also hit three home runs in my brief career. As I recall, two of them were in-field, and the third was over the fence, but it may have been the other way around. I also threw a runner out at second and got a slider out at home by holding onto the ball even after being laid out flat by him. Proud moments.
Seeing games was something else. I went to see the Cincinnati Reds play many times at the old Riverfront Stadium, which seemed a lot more impressive as a kid than it was shortly before they tore it down, when blocks of cement reportedly would fall from the ceiling of the parking garage to land on cars. I loved how bright it was at night inside the stadium, and there were people moving around constantly. Every once in a while you'd catch "the wave", and the fireworks were always suitably impressive.
One night my older brother took me, and he gave me some money to buy a souvenir plastic helmet. I doubt I was even thirteen at the time, and I got stopped by a small group of black kids, one of whom stole the money I was foolishly carrying in my hand for the world to see. What I remember vividly about the incident is, another of the kids, who were all about my age, asked me if I wanted him to get it back. Crying, I said yes, and he took off running after the thief. Of course, I never saw either one of them again, but I wonder if he really did try to get the money back for me.
More than once, the game ran late enough that my dad and I would get home after midnight. We would stop at Frisch's Big Boy on the way home, since they were the only place still open at that hour, and get some ice cream fudge cake with whipped cream and a cherry on top, their specialty. I haven't had that in years. Remembering those nights when I was taking poetry in college, I wrote this:
Ball Game
Dad took me to see the Reds play
a few times when I was 10.
In the old, faded yellow pickup
his breath was the acrid smell
of cigarettes, ends burning.
The Reds sometimes won, sometimes lost,
but it was always late when we left, and bright
with streetlights and the headlights of speeding cars.
We stopped at Frisch's on the way home
to eat a fourth meal: Big Boys with milkshakes.
Whenever we got home-two or three in the morning-
we made our way silently out of the darkened garage,
my mother and sister already fast asleep.
When I inevitably knocked over the trashcan
the cat arched its back into a crescent moon.
I had a zero batting average that year because I got scared of the ball, but I hadn't always been. I started playing Pee Wee League ball as an outfielder, and like most of my peers, I got bored and didn't pay attention very well while standing alone as the sun went down, waiting for something to happen. But some way or another, I eventually became backup catcher, and I not only made some good plays, I also hit three home runs in my brief career. As I recall, two of them were in-field, and the third was over the fence, but it may have been the other way around. I also threw a runner out at second and got a slider out at home by holding onto the ball even after being laid out flat by him. Proud moments.
Seeing games was something else. I went to see the Cincinnati Reds play many times at the old Riverfront Stadium, which seemed a lot more impressive as a kid than it was shortly before they tore it down, when blocks of cement reportedly would fall from the ceiling of the parking garage to land on cars. I loved how bright it was at night inside the stadium, and there were people moving around constantly. Every once in a while you'd catch "the wave", and the fireworks were always suitably impressive.
One night my older brother took me, and he gave me some money to buy a souvenir plastic helmet. I doubt I was even thirteen at the time, and I got stopped by a small group of black kids, one of whom stole the money I was foolishly carrying in my hand for the world to see. What I remember vividly about the incident is, another of the kids, who were all about my age, asked me if I wanted him to get it back. Crying, I said yes, and he took off running after the thief. Of course, I never saw either one of them again, but I wonder if he really did try to get the money back for me.
More than once, the game ran late enough that my dad and I would get home after midnight. We would stop at Frisch's Big Boy on the way home, since they were the only place still open at that hour, and get some ice cream fudge cake with whipped cream and a cherry on top, their specialty. I haven't had that in years. Remembering those nights when I was taking poetry in college, I wrote this:
Ball Game
Dad took me to see the Reds play
a few times when I was 10.
In the old, faded yellow pickup
his breath was the acrid smell
of cigarettes, ends burning.
The Reds sometimes won, sometimes lost,
but it was always late when we left, and bright
with streetlights and the headlights of speeding cars.
We stopped at Frisch's on the way home
to eat a fourth meal: Big Boys with milkshakes.
Whenever we got home-two or three in the morning-
we made our way silently out of the darkened garage,
my mother and sister already fast asleep.
When I inevitably knocked over the trashcan
the cat arched its back into a crescent moon.
Wednesday, January 03, 2007
Open your ears
Have you ever had one of those experiences that turned your perception of the music you listen to on its head? I know I'm not alone because I've talked to others who, all of a sudden hear different messages in the music on the radio, or even old favorites. I think it comes from insight, when you suddenly see clearly where the writer/performer is coming from, whereas before you were just letting them lead you along.
What about mishearing lyrics? Some observant people have even written books on this subject, the first I encountered being Scuse Me While I Kiss This Guy. The cover shows Jimi Hendrix apparently forcing a smooch on a white man (the author?). While that may be rich for interpretation, it was pretty straightforward listing the correct lines compared to what somebody (not credited) had once believed them to be.
The most recent song that I got wrong on the most basic level is Hinder's "Lips of an Angel". In my office, we generally keep the volume on the radio low, which can make it hard to hear what's being sung. I had a hard time understanding lyrics under the best of circumstances when I was a kid, but I got better at it when I started writing myself. The first couple dozen times I heard this one, I thought it was about the infidelity of the woman the singer was with, but when I finally heard it at full volume, it turns out he's the one tempted to stray (by an ex-lover). I thought he was singing "Girl, it must be hard to be faithful/with the lips of an angel", but it's actually "But girl you make it hard to be faithful/With the lips of an angel".
It's funny, I actually had a hard time remembering what I originally thought he was saying, since once you get it right it makes so much more sense. Another common occurrence from my childhood, and one reason I couldn't write a book like that from my own "mondegreens". Hard to believe there's actually a word for them.
What about mishearing lyrics? Some observant people have even written books on this subject, the first I encountered being Scuse Me While I Kiss This Guy. The cover shows Jimi Hendrix apparently forcing a smooch on a white man (the author?). While that may be rich for interpretation, it was pretty straightforward listing the correct lines compared to what somebody (not credited) had once believed them to be.
The most recent song that I got wrong on the most basic level is Hinder's "Lips of an Angel". In my office, we generally keep the volume on the radio low, which can make it hard to hear what's being sung. I had a hard time understanding lyrics under the best of circumstances when I was a kid, but I got better at it when I started writing myself. The first couple dozen times I heard this one, I thought it was about the infidelity of the woman the singer was with, but when I finally heard it at full volume, it turns out he's the one tempted to stray (by an ex-lover). I thought he was singing "Girl, it must be hard to be faithful/with the lips of an angel", but it's actually "But girl you make it hard to be faithful/With the lips of an angel".
It's funny, I actually had a hard time remembering what I originally thought he was saying, since once you get it right it makes so much more sense. Another common occurrence from my childhood, and one reason I couldn't write a book like that from my own "mondegreens". Hard to believe there's actually a word for them.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
