Trip highlight (2 of 2): Reminiscence of an old house.

One night on my mini-trip when we were having a barbecue, both my friends got to reminiscing about where they lived when they first moved in together, over fifteen years ago.

"That city is just shitty," my friend was like.  "They've tried to spruce up the downtown, but I really think it's just the people who live there."

Their old house was decaying and had a big front porch, and since it was in the bad part of town with a view of a street that was a boundary between gangs, they'd sit out sometimes and watch packs of youth rove around and face each other off across some imaginary boundary.

A few times, late at night, they heard gunfire.

Another time, this guy was just walking down the sidewalk on the street in front of them, chugging liquor from a paper bag, with his dick hanging out of his pants, just pissing as he walked along.

Trip highlight (1 of 2): Taco bar.

During my one weekend trip to Michigan see my 2 friends and their family, I tagged along to a high school graduation event of an old neighbor of theirs.

It was in a rural township hall, and they had some coffee and pop set up, and a taco bar with big tin trays of ground beef and chicken, a selection of hard or soft shells, and toppings like giant bowls of chopped iceberg lettuce and pre-shredded cheese and sour cream, not to mention a fruit tray, too.

I talked with one (middle-aged) (mommish) (white) woman, who said she had stayed up the previous day doing all the cooking.

"It's all homemade, including both salsas, too," she was like.

"It's great," I was like, and I went on to have 4 tacos, all ground beef, and 3 hard shell.

In my city I can get a lot of great Mexican food, but the shitty Americanized version rules, too.

Interesting day in the neighborhood (3 of 3): Bikeride home.

As I bike home from the big box store, it's like 11pm at night, and as I pass a Crossfit in this odd barren neighborhood with warehouse apartments and scattered storefronts, I see a long man outside the closed exercise place, staring at a brick pillar on either side of which the windows are set, and intently and repeatedly lashing out at it with fists as he's huddled over, doing boxing moves.

There's no-one else around, and he looks normal and otherwise in a sane mind.

Interesting day in the neighborhood (2 of 3): Bathing suit shopping.

After that and then the grocery store, I bike up to a chain big box store to try to get a bathing suit and maybe some sandals, since my sandals broke and my bathing suit got a tear in the butt in it over Memorial Day weekend.

It's like 40 minutes till close on a slow weeknight, and as I go up the escalator to the second floor, when I turn to go to the men's section, it's now the boys' section, and I notice there's a mechanical cherrypicker moving signage, and a higher number of employees around here and there putting racks of clothing on pallets.

After I go pick out some bathing suits to go try on, I talk to one (late 30s) (black) (female) employee with a pallet, to see if I can get someone to open the dressing room.

"And why is all this going on?", I was like.

"We're remodelling all this month," she was like.  "And tonight's a big night, by tomorrow that dressing room will be over there in the corner."

"No way!", I was like.  "That means I could be the last person ever to change in that dressing room.  I got to take a picture and put that shit on Facebook."

At that, she laughed.

Finally, when another (black) (female) employee came to let me in to the dressing room, I made the same joke.

"I'll be like, 'Time for a selfie!'", and mugged as I mimicked holding a smartphone out, as we chit-chatted outside the dressing room.

Again, an employee laughed.

Interesting day in the neighborhood (1 of 3): Quarry Park.

After my one weekend trip, I worked from home the next day, then went to do a lot of errands.

First, though, I took a walk in the quarry park, since the weather was beautiful.

As I was walking around one area, I passed this (older) (round-faced) (Chinese) woman, and we nod, and then later as we pass again, she says, "How are you? Good joooooob, good joooooob," referencing how I was picking up a small bag of trash as I walked, and saying "good job" so that the first pitch was high and the second low and descending, probably somehow carrying over linguistic features from Chinese.

A dream of a play.

The other week, I dreamt -

I'm at this avant garde theater company, where you're in this big warehouse space with a home sprawled out like on a TV set where there's walls and stuff but they don't reach up to the ceiling, and the performance happens where the audience just stands around wherever, trying to be out of the way, and the actors come in and walk around the house, occasionally doing musical numbers.

As the show starts, there's a big opening musical number where people run in singing and dancing, and I'm very happy because I know the show is getting buzz and I can't believe I'm seeing it, as I make myself small standing by a recliner over towards a wall in a living room-type area.

Then, the bit character of a maid runs in, skipping, and falls into someone's arms right in front of me and then gets spun around like in an improvised ballroom dance move, and as she does that,she throws her head back a bit and she spins out at the height of the arc like two yards from me, and it's a vivacious, smiling Susan Sarandon.

And, I suddenly know somehow that she was in town in secret with Tim Robbins, and they had seen the show and she had talked her way into a bit part in the morning performance and was now doing it again for the afternoon performance, and I was in on something special.

. . .

(I think parts of this dream come from my seeing the apartment set set up in a warehouse for that one soap opera I was on, and also from reading a Rolling Stone article about Hamilton a few weeks ago.)

Confessions of a hairdresser friend.

The other week I took a bustrip over a long weekend to go visit this couple I know from my hometown and their three children.

On the late afternoon of the day I left, me and the hairdresser of the couple and one of the kids go out to walk their dog, and like two-fifths of the way up, the dog stops to shit.

"I'm not going to pick that up now," my hairdresser friend was like.  "I have to wait a while, it really grosses me out if I pick it up warm."

"Me too," I was like.  "I've always found that very gross, I can't handle that shit!".

Then, I realized what I had said, and I was like, again, "I mean, literally, I can't handle that shit!".