Intentionally Unexpected
It’s 68 degrees with high light fluffy scattered clouds, a gentle breeze is blowing, and the Blue Angels are tearing up the sky.
It feels almost like a Seattle summer. If only there were a slight saltwater smell. (Or, you know, any sort of mountains on the horizon.)
Yesterday was the first day since we moved here that the AC didn’t kick on at all. The whole day. This makes my power meter happy!
Today is the first day since we moved here that it actually had to HEAT the house. Well… okay, back to work power meter.
Apparently Fall was one day long? This morning it was 35 degrees, it won’t get above 65 today. It’ll be 85 again on Tuesday though. I’m not used to the weather being this confusing!
In other news of strange happenings, I found myself on, apparently, the wrong side of the tracks while driving home from the far side of Dallas the other day. I’m driving down a road through kind of an industrial area, headed towards a pretty upscale area. Suddenly I’m driving by a mostly abandoned strip mall. In this forlorn strip mall, next to a sushi place (which raises it’s own set of questions!) and a Metro PCS store, is a store called “Condoms To Go”. My brain is busy being confused about this (Doesn’t that imply a “condoms for here” store? Can you even run a viable business selling condoms? Does this location need a lot of condoms?) when I see, standing by the entrance to the strip mall, what can only be one of the ugliest hookers ever to stand a streetcorner. I’ve seen Cops and Live PD, this was definitely a hooker. I’ll give her this, she was friendly, waving nicely to everyone driving by, however just based on her looks I think she’d give even the loneliest long-haul truck driver pause! So now I’m wondering if she’s in partnership with the Condoms To Go store, a convenient bystander, or perhaps even some sort of anti-condom protestor trying to completely ruin their business by making anyone driving by who was in the mood for a quick condom to go stop reconsider their choices. There are just so many layers of possibilities here!
At this point I’m double confused, this whole neighborhood is causing so many questions! But we’re not done yet, because moments later, on the same side of the road, I look through some trees and see a man standing in a tower with a shotgun, and a couple of guys in a golf cart.
It turns out it was a sport shooting club, but at the time it really was the icing on the cake. I was too confused, my brain just gave up and went back to focusing on driving, and getting the hell out of whatever strange neighborhood I was in back to my nice calm country suburb, with its lilting tones of Mexican construction music wafting gently across the moors…
It’s up to 56 outside. I think I might go play in the park or something, it seems nice out there.
First adventure to “downtown” Dallas, and we’ve found the equivalent of Portland’s Hawthorne district. We’re seeing a concert by Carbon Leaf in a nice tiny little place full of wacky art.
Kinda weird being back in the big city!
I know we haven’t been posting much lately, I actually have a backlog of things to put up. I’ll get too them soon, I promise. 😁
Knitting pattern authors who do not use charts will be exiled to a remote island with a calculus textbook and graph paper, and only enough wood to build one boat without errors. When you learn how to properly design something first, write down the plan, and THEN execute on it you can rejoin civilization.
Those who do not survive will not be missed.
As a nice change of pace from THAT debacle I’m going to build some Legos. At least they know how to plan ahead.
Went to the pool, turns out they were having a “dive in movie” event.
This was a good way to see Dumbo. Pretty glad we didn’t go to the theater. Cool music, neat asthetic, bad writing and worse acting. But excellent background for paddling about.
I know we haven’t posted much lately, been stealthily working on getting a bunch of stuff done, and had company over. It’s been pretty much just getting house organized. We’re getting soooo close!
Bevin has a magic power. She can fill any kitchen with smoke by using the oven.
It is not a useful power.
She will not be pleased with me posting this.
We’ve been organizing the master closet, and we’re thinking about putting sweaters and stuff in the back corner out of the way.
I went into one of the other bedrooms to put some things away, looked into one of the closets, thought “hmm, what should we put he….”
Yeah, we have 5 other closets available. Take away the 2 in one guest bedroom and the 1 walk-in in the other guest bedroom and we still have two whole EXTRA closets.
My brain is still getting used to living in more that 505 square feet.
Also, Bevin is making bread.
Everyone is so nice in Texas. With two exceptions:
Seriously, It’s observable and repeatable! I’ve met ONE nice barista, the rest have all been surly. I think early 2000’s snobby coffee culture maybe just arrived here or something? Either that or Starbucks is piloting the mandatory lunchbreak electro-shock therapy here.
On the issue of cars, I think they’re second only to California on my list of places where people are actively trying to kill you while driving, it’s actually pretty insane. Doing 15mph over the limit keeping pace with absolutely solid traffic ahead of you? People will tailgate you until you merge out of their chosen lane or they decide to go around you. I was held up in traffic yesterday for 3 full changes of a single stoplight because people just park in the middle of the intersection, preventing anyone from going anywhere when the light changes.
In california it made sense, they were all terrible people either in their cars or not. But everyone here (barring baristas) is super friendly. Until we go all destruction-derby on each other apparently. Very weird.
When you get a severe weather alert the weather certainly looks suitably severe at least….
Me: Traaaaaaaaaaain!
Bevin: Hoot Hoot!
Me: [incredulously] … Hoot…?
Bevin: You know, the sound a train makes?
Me: [doubly incredulous] Don’t you mean “Choo Choo”? It’s owls that go “hoot”, what kind of books did your parents even read you?!?!
I wish we had a video of me boggling my eyes at her. “incredulous” barely does it justice. Hoot. Hmph. Trains do not “hoot”.
In other train related news, the GE locomotive plant down the road has bays named “test hospital” and “paint hospital”. I enjoyed the idea of a locomotive going to the paint hospital.