I rode along to San Marcos tonight with Erik to pick up a vehicle from another dealer. We dropped off one truck, picked up another. We exited the lot, hit the turnaround on the access road, and RAN OUT OF GAS just on the other side of the I-35 from the dealership where we'd gotten this thing. Seriously, there would not have been enough gas in it to get to any gas station. So he started pushing and I steered and prayed. I prayed for help and I prayed Erik wouldn't have an asthma attack and drop dead right there. And after about half a mile, pushing this truck in ONE HUNDRED SIX degrees, three answers to prayer stopped to help push us into the Diamond Shamrock just ahead.

Now, is it just me, or is that, to hand off a car that empty, an example of poor business-to-business dealings?

The man who proudly told the realtor he was my surrogate dad, since my dad couldn't be here to help in the choosing of a house, said, "You know what a pool is, don't you? It's a hole in the ground you throw money into."

And since ours sits atop an electrical easement, the City may ask us to drain it and move it anytime they need to get through our yard to do electrical work.

If we drain the thing and scrub-a-dub it this weekend until it sparkles, how long, I wonder, until the garden hose refills the pool? And if we manage to coerce the fire department into coming out here and filling it, they say the pressure from the fire hose may tear our pool apart.

A friend at work said today that their backyard pool became so much work that they just filled it in and bought season tickets to Fiesta Texas, to go sit in that pool. Which is probably not a bad plan of attack. We do have Schlitterbahn here in town, after all. And they have the Dragon Blaster and we have... some of those nifty pool noodles.

Gotta admit, kinda thinking about planting a vegetable garden for the family of bunnies out there that ate up all of my flowers.

We won all this time off this afternoon, but Regina won 30 more minutes off of work so Jason let me go too, since Regina is the one who chauffers me home in the afternoon. She ran me by the store, as there was no milk in the house with which to make cappuccino to help me decompress, and I can't drive myself there and it's just in the better interests of all if I am driven and if I have the tools for coffee.

So anyway, I am lounging here, in minimal clothing, slathered in self-tanning product. Hopefully I won't be too orange tomorrow. But this is Texas, and I will then just combat the orange with, what is it Kristen? A lemon juice and sugar scrub, and then I will sit out in my backyard until my skintone returns.

Hey, look at this. I was totally talking to my boss about this movie, The Rainmaker, this afternoon, and now, just now yall, it is on television. HBOW, I believe. This happens often. If I think about a movie hard enough, it'll be on tv. Once I was explaining the movie Somewhere in Time to Erik, a show I hadn't seen for twenty years, and my parents went to that Grand Hotel on vacation, and I turned on the tv, and it was on!!

A Cheerleader Carwash will pay all your bills. It's the PERFECT fundraiser. Ex-boyfriend stole your couch? Cheerleader Carwash. Went over your minutes on your phone last month? Cheerleader Carwash, in a hurry. Work is stressing you out and you need to see the sunset from Santorini before you die? Cheerleader Carwash, baby. Traffic backs up for miles for a bunch of girls in cheerleader uniforms.

Today Erik took me into San Antonio for an appointment. I was reminded of what it's like to drive around the labrynth of highways and byways at rush hour. And when I was working in advertising, I was driving all over that city every day, for a living!

Now, I don't drive at all. Lord, am I happy to have moved out to the little hamlet of New Braunfels.

Consider the NBA logo, with the colors going blue, white, red, from left to right.

Now, everybody in the free world says those three colors in the order of red, white and blue.

So you just know that decision was made by a couple of bored graphic artists, on a Saturday maybe, sliding the components of the logo around and around a table, saying, "Do you like it better this way, or just to mess with everyone, should we put the colors in backwards order?"

This is it now
Everybody get down
This is all I can take
This is how a heart breaks

Maybe sometimes when we're wondering why God doesn't give us what we want, it's because He already has.

I was talking to Diane yesterday, and she's going on vacation in a couple weeks, her first stop being Seattle.

"Your Mistake Town," she laughed.

WHAT??? MISTAKE?

"Remember," she said, "when you were a teenager and you saw the Everybody Hurts video and the Space Needle and you thought that was Seattle and you wanted to move there?"

But instead, through a series of events, I landed in San Antonio, which also has one of those Space Needley-lookin' towers. I even left here once, and came back to it after not too terribly long.

REM filmed that video on I-10 in San Antonio, facing downtown and the skyline.

I thought it AMAZING that she remembered that story. I still really love Seattle. I especially yearn for it when I climb into my truck and the temp guage reads ONE HUNDRED TEN. Perhaps we'll end up there one day, close to beloved family and far away from the bugs and snakes that Texas has in abundance.

I'm just mad because I bought flowers for the yard and they died so quickly. It's HOT. Whaddya do if it's just too hot for flowers?

I consider myself a pretty good movie watching companion. I'm not one of those people who talks the whole time (especially annoying in a theater, so this is why the four of us watch most movies in one of our living rooms (I broke up with a boyfriend once for being a bad theater movie companion)) and I try not to yell, "Yeah, right, that would totally not EVER happen! WHAT. EVER." And I try not to snore, even if what's on the screen is something so bad it can only be described as I Heart Huckabee's.

But that doesn't mean I can't blog about it. In run-on sentences.

We saw White Noise last night with Mike&Kristen. I love a good Michael Keaton show as much as the next gal ("I am Batman. Tell your friends."). In sixth grade, Lane told me that no, he wasn't zany because his dear mother had dropped him on his head as a baby. He and Lee would get off the school bus at his house and watch blank videotapes. And that's how that happened.

Because I am a Christian, I don't believe we can converse with our loved ones through static.

I do concede that in our grief and loneliness for passed-on people, we might WANT to believe they are reaching out to us from a detuned television screen. And if that's how "the Great Hereafter" ends up being, I'm telling you right now, don't look for me in STATIC, because everybody knows how I can't stand imperfect audio. Do not, I implore you, listen for me in between two radio stations. Pick one or the other or shut it OFF. When I'm in Heaven, I will be TOO BUSY being in Heaven.

This morning I dreamed I worked in a new hospital. I could smell the paint. I enjoyed a breakfast of dry toast and institutional coffee in a brown mug in the cafeteria with my dad, who happened to work there too. On my way back to my office, I ran into CJ Cruz on the stairs. She asked me what on earth I was doing there, and told me I needed to think about my life first, and get back into broadcasting.

I am positive this dream stemmed from my desire during the whole movie last night to fix the STATIC.

We spent the day with the Harrisons. The men burned meat on the back patio, then we watched a couple movies. When the guys went into town on a Blockbuster run, Erik chose the first show.

It was one of those experiences, much like The Royal Tenenbaums, when every time the music swelled, I was looking for the credits to roll. I would have completely nodded off during this movie, but Erik was snoring too loudly next to me.

And it was HIS choice. So I elbowed him gently when he zonked out. He came to slightly, and said, "Baby, shhh. Let me sleep."

I'm not kidding. I told him to remember that at about 4:30 tomorrow morning.

After it was finally over, the guys asked if Kristen and I wanted another cappuccino.

"No," Kristen said. "I want my two hours back."

I'm sitting in my living room, surrounded by scads of photos and scraps of paper that amuse me, and a few stickers. I just had a lot of crap I needed to toss out, so I thought before I do that, I'd better take a few of the important elements of all that crap and scrapbook it quick. I've been meaning to do this for a while. Besides, life is uncertain and I'd want you to have access to my history, should anything happen. Some of the sagas, not so much. But anyway, I see on tv that Real World XVI is about to premiere. And I have to stop for a moment to FIGURE OUT that XVI= 16. Holy cow. That cannot be, can it??

I mean, I could tell you all about Real World THREE, and how my friends and I watched reruns religiously, even thought about roadtripping to San Francisco... Or that the season they were in Seattle was totally MY year, what with a radio station and all... SIXTEEN? How OLD am I? Also cool is that Sixteen is going to be up the road in Austin. XVI. That can't possibly be right. Ten points to the first person to email me and tell me I'm wrong. That eleven years haven't passed since my freshman year of college. I'm wrong, right?

Auditory hallucinations are a known precursor to seizure. In my circle, these are known as "the sirens."

Lately, we've all been a little sketched out, because they've been happening a lot. By a lot, I mean they were coming once a month, and then every two weeks, or every week. Now it's unpredictable. Today, for example, I had "sirens" off and on all day long.

Have you seen Pitch Black with Vin Diesel? The sound emitted by those scary night planet creatures is kind of the same thing I hear right before I lose consciousness.

Maybe it's a form of tinnitus? Brought on by damage from years in the studio with headphones too loud?

I'm High Maintenance. But my real friends accept that and love me anyway.

Last night, during Hit Me Baby 1 More Time, I was sure glad Erik wasn't home, because when Tiffany sang, "I Think We're Alone Now," I jumped back into my 12-year-old self, standing on the bed, singing along. I used to sing into one of the four posts of my canopy bed.

When I got to do a phone interview with Tiffany on the morning show in 1997 (?), I told her I used to do that. She said she used to do that, too, to Linda Ronstadt's music. :)

This Spurs team should never split up for other pastures. They are incredible. Coach Pop said a franchise couldn't be any more fortunate, than to have David Robinson for ten years and Tim Duncan for ten, twelve, fourteen years after that. As for Obiwan Ginobli - It kind of seems like there are about three of him on the floor at all times.

Janet The Coffee Lady here at work is a survivor of cancer. She's a Christian, she's from Rhode Island, and she's jovial. This morning she seemed a bit disturbed and I asked if she was ok.

She sounded kind of annoyed when she told me she has to start chemo again. I rounded the coffee counter to hug her, and she said they found a "spot" on her liver.

I promised her I'll pray for her, and that the United Methodist Women in Washburn, ND, will be praying for her as well.

My friend Erin hasn't been at work for several months. It seems like the cancer is taking her in exactly the six months the doctor originally gave her. It has spread to her brain, so she doesn't hold normal conversations anymore.

When Lane died, his doctor gave him six months. It took him in six weeks. Liz has been fending it off for six years.

Is there something about the everyday chemicals we use, or the preservatives in our food, that is making Cancer seem so commonplace?