Musically, I'm Getting Old.

I really just don't understand these Demi Lovato lyrics! -

don't tell your mother/
kiss one another/
die for each other/
we're cool for the summer

- since how does dying for one another mean being cool for the summer?

I just don't get it.

Is this like some overdramatic teen thing, or maybe irony about some overdramatic teen thing?

Road trip memories of a local artist.

So, there's this one (older) (black) (gay) (dreadlocked) artist that I know through friends, and who I sometimes run into at the university gym.

When I ran into him last, it had been a while, and it turned out that he had just gotten back from a roadtrip with his band that included Quebec.

"It's like France, but without the asshole," he was like.

He also said that when he was in France, someone told him not to speak French if he couldn't speak it perfectly.

"'Kiss the crack of my black ass,' do you speak that?", he told them.

Flashback to Thanksgiving Eve...

I had been in touch with a Spanish professor friend about hanging out and grabbing drinks earlier the week of Thanksgiving, but he was tired, so I mentioned maybe coming out on Thanksgiving Eve and joining me and a friend to club, and surprisingly enough it turns out that not only did he have friends in town, but that he was also game for all of them to meet up with us.

I don't have the text right in front of me right now, but he suggested meeting up after dinner, around 10:30pm.

Later, when we met up around 10:30pm, I was like, "Spain would be proud of you, a late dinner then clubbing."

"A late dinner?", he was like.  "We just say 'dinner'."

Anyhow, his one (also Spanish) professor friend got really hammered, and when we ended up at that one trashy club that I like, she was in awe of this giant painted up (white) trans*woman with a homemade thin paper light up wolfshead on top of her head.

She even insisted that she get a picture with her.

Beautiful neighborhood detail: Stickers.

The other week on a day when I was working from home, I popped into the local library branch on a late afternoon to pick up a new novel so I'd have something to read at home, since I had just finished my last novel the previous weekend.

Right when I was walking up, a line formed, including in head of me a thin (young) (Chinese) mom with two twin (Chinese) toddlers who were both quietly insisting on walking outside of the large stroller that she was pushing.

I started looking at the "New Books" rack nearby while I waited, then all of a sudden the deskworker asked me if I needed help, though the mom and the kids hadn't moved from being right in front of me in front of the circulation desk.

"They need stickers," the mom told the deskworker.

At that, the deskworker ducked down to a space behind the computer, pulled out a small blue plastic basket, then held it out to the 2 boys so they could pick out stickers of Winnie the Pooh and the like, which they did very slowly and intently.

After the mom and the kids left, I told the deskworker that I didn't realize that they gave out stickers to kids.

"Yes," she was like, "We do that, we buy them at the dollar store on sale and keep them here for the children."

I found that very sweet and admirable, that they spent spare money out of their own pocket to improve the library like that.

My (Asian-Canadian) friend's Thanksgiving Eve.

This past Thanksgiving Eve, my one (Asian-Canadian) friend worked very late in the lab, and since his lab is located in one of the university's hospitals, there was a free Thanksgiving meal starting at midnight for all of the overnight workers.

The whole place was just deserted, he said, but then you got to the cafeteria, and it was just busy with a ton of people and even a ton of people getting multiple meals take-out style for their coworkers who were tied up for some reason and couldn't make it down for the meal.

One woman had a metal rolly cart, he said, with 11 plates of pie slices piled on it.

(He counted.)

He also said that on holidays he likes not being with family, since you have a chance to be in other parts of the world at times that no-one ever sees.

A dream of everyday objects being off... but in a positive way!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The other week I had another dream about things from my daily life being off, but this time they were off in a positive way!

That night, I dreamt that I needed a strainer larger than the largest one I had, and I opened a drawer for some random reason, and then right there there were two larger strainers from the same set as the two I currently use, but I had put them at the back of the drawer since they're so large I thought I'd never use them, and I had forgotten about them, and then there they all were, all shiny and new and unused and just what I needed.

. . .

(In real life the night of that dream I had made vegetable broth with scraps and set out the scraps in a strainer to let the remaining broth drain off into a bowl so I could get it all, but I had so many scraps, I had to pile them quite high in the strainer, and I was afraid they'd roll off and into the bowl.)

Conversation with my 2nd floor neighbor.

So, I had borrowed a hairdryer from the other 2nd floor tenant in order to put that plastic shrinkwrap up on my windows to save heat during the winter, and since she was home when I went to go return the hairdryer, I ended up asking to see her apt. layout and hanging out standing in her apt. kitchen just standing there and chit-chatting a bit.

Oddly, her bathroom is divided into two, with each half directly to either side of her apt.'s main entrance door, the toilet and sink through a door immediately to the left and the shower/tub through a door immediately to the right.

(You have to go up a little step, too, when you enter each of her bathrooms.)

"This building is so old and all the apartments are so weird," she was like.  "I mean, seriously, what's up with that?".

She's like (mid-30s) (white) (a bit round) and has long (brown) hair and works retail in a bookstore and has for years, and is originally from New Orleans and originally came up here post-Katrina, she said.

She also had all this take-out food all out all over her counter, and she said she just loves to come home after work and eat take-out food and sit around.

"Look at this," she was like, poking a plastic tray of Chinese with a chicken wing sitting out on top.  "I can get four meals out of this."

She also said that she partied so much growing up in New Orleans, that she's really just a Grandma already.

We also talked about the couple with the kids who live above me.

"I can hear them screaming a lot," she was like.  "It's like 'Please, I can't even.'"

She also said that she thinks that they let the kids run around and scream on the landing sometimes, and that the little boy likes to stomp up and down the stairs yelling "Fire, fire!".

She also also said that a while ago, the dad of the couple stopped through to say that they had cigarette smoke in their apartment and were wondering if it was her because it was bothering their kids.

"I was like, 'Hell yes it's me, it was too damn cold out and I don't feel like freezing my ass off to go have a cigarette, so I had one f*cking cigarette in my own f*cking kitchen, what are you going to do, sue me?'".

I then told her how they didn't lift a finger to fight bedbugs, even though their young son was getting bit up with itchy welts.

"They're weird," she was like.

"They're evangelical," I was like.

"Ok, I can see that," she was like.  "That explains a lot."

Because she seems fun and did mention that she goes out every now and then, I decided to mention hanging out in the neighborhood or ideally going clubbing some banging bar night so she could just let it all hang out.

"I'm going out [name of the Eve of the next major holiday], you know the club [name of my favorite trashy club]...", I was like - and immediately she interrupted me.

"Oh yeah, I used to live in that neighborhood and go there all the time!  Whenever I'd go, bad stuff would happen, a friend would throw up, you'd wake up in somebody else's bed...", she was like.