Faux pas.

A couple Saturdays ago my one lawyer friend from Missouri had people over to her house for wine and food in order to meet her mom, who's in town visiting.

Her (Mexican) boyfriend arrived late, and he showed up in a cap and a black vest carrying a dish covered in aluminum foil - his contribution to the evening; a salad of cut-up cactus fruit and onions and cilantro that his mom made and he had kept aside from from his sister's birthday party, that was earlier in the evening and he came straight over from his parents' house - and when the mom opened the door, she turned to call her daughter out of the kitchen and was like, "[my one lawyer friend from Missouri's 1st name], a delivery man is here!"

Hangman word!

My one professor friend who I play hangman puzzles with was excited when I texted her that the new issue of my puzzle magazine was in, and hangman this month was "2 word phrases", so we were texting each other back and forth possible 2 word phrases such as "brass knuckles"...

My favorite was her suggestion "fuck buddy", since it would probably look like this after a person took up a lot of guesses on vowels -

_ U _ _ _ U _ _ Y

- and no one would be able to get it, since the consonants are obscure (n.b., word divisions are not indicated, you have to figure them out).

Speaking of bikes...

I finally got rid of my old bike, which had an injury that was hard to repair (the chain had eaten through the gear-change cord, and it would have cost like $80 to replace, and the bike only cost $60)...

I bought a new one, and found a drop-off point for the bike charity where I had originally gotten my bike, and so I walked it up to this natural foods grocery store, and now the bike people can repair it as part of their teaching classes and resell it to make money, if they have that particular gear-change cord on hand!

...bike trouble...

a few weeks ago riding my bike, i heard this "pow" and my back tire was immediately flat, it didn't even drain gradually like you do when you usually get a flat.

when i took it into the bike shop, the bike guy extracted a 3-inch long nail from my tire, and said he'd never seen anything like it...

usually, he said, the tire brushes aside stuff like that, but it must have been positioned just right to go into my tire like that - and now I'm left wondering, had someone deliberately planted a nail like that in the road to get cars or bikes?

Library hijinx.

The other day at school, I had to get a crapload of books out of the lowest level of the library, and somehow in the stacks I got turned around in circles and couldn't find the staircase out.

As I was wandering, I saw this apathetic undergrad hippie-ish girl shelving, and when she was like, "Can I help you find something?", I told her my predicament, she pointed out the direction to go to find the stairs, and I was like, "Thank you so much, for a second I thought I was going to die down here!", and at that, she mugged and was like, "I totally know the feeling."

Forgotten bit from my trip home: Art appreciation.

I forgot -

I had gone to a fish fry with my parents over Labor Day weekend when I was home, and after that my mom wanted to stop into a quilt shop real quick before it was closing, so my dad and I just waited in the car for her, and while we were doing that, I noticed my dad kept looking over to the railroad tracks, and when I asked him why, he told me it was because there was graffiti on the boxcars, and he loves it.

"A lot of it's really artistic when you look at it," he was like, and added that it's tough to get any sort of precision when you use spray paint, he hated to use the stuff when he worked in construction, but the graffiti people get the coolest designs out of it.

In fact, he was so interested in it, he got out of the car and lit a cigarette and walked across the street to get a better look.

When my mom got back from the quilt shop, I asked her if she knew that my dad liked graffiti, and she said no, but it didn't surprise her, and though they've never talked about it, she likes it a lot too.

Nigerian parade!

Yesterday I went to a Nigerian parade in my neighborhood.

It was to start at noon according to posters, but it was nowhere near starting, so I stopped by an African goods shop, and the guy told me to stop by an African restaurant, and the girl there said the parade was going to begin 12-12:30-1pm (at that time it was 12:15pm), so I went to the local grocery store and got groceries and went home and unpacked them, then I strolled back and it was like 12:45pm, and still no parade, so I started walking up the advertised parade route.

There were a few traffic cops working at an intersection, so I asked them about the parade and they looked at their info sheets, but there was no listed starting time, but the one (hispanic) (female) one said that it should be starting by 1pm or so.

"I hate these gloves," she was like, as she pulled them off to unfold her info sheet better.

So, I started walking further up the parade route, and at the starting point at 1pm, all I could see was Nigerians and frustrated cops looking at each other, as well as Nigerians in full African garb going around looking at like the 6 floats (2 of which were from money-wiring companies), and a ton of cars lined up full of Nigerians and Nigerian flags sticking out the windows.

So, I went into a store and got some cheesey-popcorn, and strolled around the starting point and then down back...

The parade finally started going like 1:50pm, and at that time a downpour started, after misting and cold winds all afternoon.

And, after going for 2 seconds, this really fat Nigerian woman who was on the second float took a microphone and called out into it that someone should go stop the 1st police car, they had 2 hours of time left for reserved traffic redirection and he was going too fast, he should slow down so the parade lasts.

"And it is raining!", she was like, "But the rain is a blessing!"

Like 2 people were watching, and she invited them to come jump on the float... 1 other float did that as well, it was very nice.

The very very last float was some old Nigerian guys, and when one of them clapped his hands out towards the 2 spectators and was like, "Happy birthday, Nigeria!", he saw me smile, and he and the other guys nodded and clapped.