Periodontist appointment happening.

So, the other week I went in for a periodontist appointment and was sitting around in the waiting room waiting to be called.

“[My first name]?”, an assistant said eventually, and not only me got up, but so did this guy in a chair a few seats away.

“Okay, what’s your last name?”, the assistant was like, and after I said my last name, she was like, “Okay, come with me.”

In the little dental lab work room, she said that that happens every so often, that two people waiting have the same first name, but she legally can’t say the last name, and so she has to ask the two confused people to volunteer that information.

Skinned knee.

The other week I noticed that I have something like a skinned knee, where the top patch of skin somehow seems to have slid a bit, and with it there’s a blister-like pool of liquid the size of a quarter under like a fourth of the odd skin patch.

So, I was pressing down on it and pressing the liquid up into a bubble and squeezing it out until it leaked through some tear in the skin over towards the edge, and I did that for several days, and every time I did that, I could feel the skin slide around on top.

For the life of me, I can’t figure out how it originally happened.

Anyhow, after a while, I just pressed down hard on it and slid the dead skin around till the edge peeled up a bit, and then I tore it off.

It didn’t hurt at all, since the skin was dead.

Rent increase at my apartment.

So, I finally got that rent increase at my apartment that I had been fearing, since the city had majorly raised taxes.

It’s $25 a month!

Phew.  

I have such a nice landlord.

He’s kept rents flat for people since he wants long-term tenants and no headaches, and I think he was honestly a bit scared of telling people of the rent increase; he informed us all by slipping a letter under our doors one evening.

He’s this (Taiwanese-American) guy who grew up in the city and went to the local state schools, and he works doing admin at a junkyard and has commonsense populist leftist politics, since he’s seen how the big companies manipulate prices to stick it to the small company he works for.

He also talks and chats in a very pleasant, even, low tone of voice, and my one neighbor who’s originally from New Orleans calls him “squirrely”, not because he’s crazy, but because he somehow resembles a squirrel, which I agree with, though I can't exactly put my finger on why.  

It's his round cheeks, somehow, but it's also something more than that.

Union activities weekend (2 of 2): Saturday barbecue.

The next day at the barbecue, I had a fun time sitting out with people in this backyard in a town just north of the city, eating food and drinking beer and just sitting out and chilling.

I saw this one (black) (female) union organizer I hadn’t seen in a long time, and somehow we started talking about Mississippi and Alabama, and she was talking about the time when she was younger she visited her family way down on a farm in Mississippi and she woke up and looked out the window and she saw a big slaughtered hog being drained of blood, and then her family said that they were going to have the best chops and bacon that week.

She also refused to take a bath since there were spiders as big as your palm in the bathtub, but when her aunt made her take the bath, she filled up the sink and splashed around in it, and her aunt walked in and saw her sitting on the toilet doing that, and because of that her aunt said she’d whip her, so she kept sitting on the toilet thinking her aunt couldn’t whip her that way, but her aunt got a switch and went after her legs and thighs.

Also, she and her daughter have visited Alabama, and her daughter picked up the habit of eating red clay river dirt from the area, since people down there add it to snuff when they chew it.

After that, every year until her grandma died, her grandma would send her this big box of red clay river dirt for Christmas, so that she could have it to eat all year long.

“My daughter’s weird like that,” the one (black) (female) union organizer said, and she also said that she had a Fear Factor themed birthday party for her when she was little, and she was upset that the flower pot of dirt and worms wasn’t actually dirt and worms, but crumbled Oreos and gummy worms.

“Give me real worms, Mama!”, she was like, “I’ll eat it!”.

“What did the other kids say?”, I was like.

“Not much,” she was like.  “They were fine with the Oreos and gummy worms.”

She also said that her daughter said that they should have had live cockroaches, too, because she would have eaten them.

At the same barbecue, I also spoke with a (German) colleague from another school, who went to this inflammatory rightwing free speech event on her campus here in the city and was just shocked.

“They called me feminazi because of my short hair,” she was like.

She also said that the U.S. is just horrible and treats low wage workers and women and mothers like shit, and she’s thought of moving back to Germany.

“You know, a British friend who’s thinking of having children has said that,” I was like, "and just a few months ago, too."

“It’s true,” she was like, and we talked a bit more, and she said that this has especially been the case the last ten years, and she’s lived in the U.S. since the mid-90s.

Union activities weekend (1 of 2): Friday conference.

So, the other weekend I had a weekend of union activities, with a Friday conference where I was presenting, and then a Saturday barbecue at a local faculty member’s, for faculty members who are unionizing across town.

At the post-conference reception on Friday, I met some interesting folks.

One was a (younger) (Puerto Rican) (Ph.D.) guy who worked for a union, who was up from Florida.

At some point during the group conversation, he started asking if marijuana had been “decrimmed” up here yet.

Later, I spoke with a (Canadian) woman who lives in the States and was in town from Pennsylvania. 

When I mentioned that I taught on cults, she opened up to me about being the grandchild of a Holocaust survivor whose entire family then turned Quaker, and who grew up around commune-like retreat centers.

And, as a teenager, she found herself at a dinner with Baba Ram Dass, and he gently suggested that she maintain her virginity and come look them up at eighteen so that she could travel around with them.

“I’m fascinated by cults,” she was like.

“It’s interesting,” I was like, starting out on a schtick of mine that I think about every once in a while for some reason.  “People who are interested in cults also tend to be interested in serial killers and the historical Jesus.”

“What?!”, she was like, so I repeated myself.

“But I’m not interested in the historical Jesus at all,” she was like.  “Though, serial killers, a little bit.”

Day at a Downtown Bookfair.

My one lawyer friend from Missouri not only wrote a children’s book and self-published it like last year, but also got a booth at a downtown bookfair in the city over a summer festival weekend this year, and so I helped staff it on the second of two days.

 There were quite a few unusual passerbys, and she was saying she couldn’t figure out if it was book people or downtown or what.

While I was there, a (very fat) (young) (black) woman stopped by the booth and stood at the edge of the group of people there and kept looking at my friend’s dog, and asked if it was male or female, and then said she’d only want girl dogs.

Later, a (slim) (slightly tall) (white) (young) guy walked by dressed like a hipster in dark jeans and a black jacket, only his jacket was buttoned up and he kept picking at it and pulling it out like a tent and letting it settle back down onto his chest as he walked along.

Still later, as we were closing up, I saw the (older) (tall) (white) guy who used to stand up at the sex documentary series and ask questions that would spiral out of control into jokes that weren’t funny and eventually nonsense.

Too, my friend said that the previous day when she was there with another lawyer friend of ours, some (old) guy stopped by and started talking to our friend, but the words coming out of his mouth were unintelligible syllables, but he just kept talking for minutes, and our friend got seriously freaked.

Summer evening picking up trash at the quarry park:

I have one empty plastic potato bag with a bit of trash at the bottom – as part of my environmental neuroticism, I re-use food bags if at all possible as trashbags when I go stroll and pick up trash in the quarry park – and as I'm out there, I see the one (Chinese) woman who’s told me “Good job” before, and now she's out walking with two other (Chinese) friends.

We say hi, and as I pass by, I see her pointing to my trashbag and saying some stuff to her friends.

After that, I come across a place where some people had been drinking and left all these beer bottles and containers and stuff, and I not only fill my bag, but also a plastic shopping bag that had been left out there as well.

Then, as I head out to go to the park entrance to dump the stuff, I pass by the three women again, and I raise my two trashbags to show them how much I had picked up.

They all smile, and give me a thumbs up before passing by me in the opposite direction.