Peapods, martial arts camps, and strange cargo

In the infamous words of Ben Folds, we're still rockin the suburbs (just like Michael Jackson did). And life is pretty happy, although I am waiting for something spectacular to happen. Like a marriage proposal, maybe.

Anyhow, school (and by that, I mean TEACHING! KIDS! LOTS OF THEM!) is beginning faster than I can say holybejeezus. I'm not as prepared as I'd like to be, but I did manage to invest in one all-important teaching item today at the local Target: my personal hall pass. After looking for a long time in the toy section for something washable and preferably coated in rubber, I finally sojourned to the dog toy area, where, lo and behold, I found THE BEST FREAKING HALLPASS IMAGINEABLE: a big green rubber peapod. I kid you not. It is truly a work of rubberized wonder, and I am going to refer to it shamelessly as "The Pea Pass" and make sure to look all of those quarterbacks in the eye good and solid-like when I hand it over to them. I might even take a Sharpie and tattoo it with "Miller Class Pea Pass" or something, although I fear this might ruin it.
I just hope someone doesn't drop it down the john. But I've already taken this possibility into account and concluded that, as it is rubber, I could just require them to dunk it in an bucket of bleach.


In other news, I went to a big all-women's martial arts camp this weekend (a decidedly weird experience for me, as I am both a) straight and b) antisocial). Anyway, I was assigned by my karate instructors to pick up two strangers from the Amtrak station on my way to the camp--Pete told me I'd be picking up a Herculean lesbian of a staggering size (a "Dyke to Beware Of," as Pete phrased it), as well as a Little Person less than 3 feet tall, all in one fell swoop. None of us knew each other, so I had to hold up a sign that said "PAWMA" (the name of the camp)--but the truth is that I pretty much knew what to look for, and was just hoping to God, the whole time, that I wouldn't crack up inappropriately when I saw the two of them together. Becuase what are the odds, people? The situation was like something from an episode of Seinfeld. Adding to the relative hilarity of the whole thing was the fact that both of them had very bizarre Russian names, but were totally unrelated to each other.
I am going to write a short story about the whole thing, although it ultimately turned out to be less eventful than I had hoped. They were both pretty cool people.

That's the update of late.
Ciao.

A lack of cohesion.

This is the best Craigslist ad I have seen yet. ("And I shall make more . . ." Hmm. Is that a threat or a promise?)
Anthropomorphism, you're my favoritest.

In other news:
Andy'n'I found a Duplex in the midst of the vast northwestern Eugenian suburbia, and it is a major fixer-upper, but it's cheap and it has a small fenced yard and sane, stable, trombone-less neighbors of its own, so we're happy. We've spent the last week transporting all of our accumulated shizznit via various family trucks--because one of the true perks of being an Oregon native (and admittedly one of the most common causes of traumatizing adolescent embarrassment among Oregonian children) is that your family is guaranteed to have at least one (and probably more) dilapidated, hideous farm truck(s) available at any given time. Whether a muffler or brakepads are present in this/these vehicle(s) is another issue entirely. The point is, Bud (Big Ugly Dodge) somehow got the job done, and after a week of hefting around literally tons of secondhand antique furniture, my biceps could rival Andy Kaufman's during the very pinnacle of his female-wrestling extravaganza.
I mean, probably.

What Bud (my parents' aforementioned farm truck) lacks in gas mileage, he apparently attempts to make up for in a baffling kind of rustic, rugged magnetism. Every time Andy and I him drove through the countryside to haul a new load of crud from my parents' house to the suburbs, several old-timers driving tractors or combines would make a gargantuan effort to wave to us. We spent three days puzzling over this ongoing phenomenon, which never happens when I drive my Golf. Probably the missing paint and mismatched goldtone spray-paint job (my father's lovely artistry) gave farmers the impression that we were locals or something. Or maybe they were waving because I was taking full advantage of the truck's bench seat and sitting in the middle right next to the strapping young driver (something the usual bucket seats of course don't allow). Anyway, people waved so much that I started to feel like Queen of the Hayseeds in some kind of a Podunk rural parade. It was awesome. Norman Rockwell was a-rollin' in his grave to paint the whole durned scene.

Yep, anyway... abruptly returning to my other tangent...
The one most major problem with the duplex is that it has an obvious history of heavy mouse traffic in the kitchen (freeways, tunnels, boardwalks, and toll booths), which has left the cabinets really [really] gnarly and chewed up. The likelihood that the owner will actually tear out the cabinets and replace them (as he should) is slim to none, so I think instead we're going to patch as many holes as we can, repaint the cabinets, and keep all of our food sealed in plastic containers. It's a pain in the ass but may deter them until the dead of winter, when plastic will probably begin to look like a subtle (if slightly waxy) appetizer to our myriad mouseling friends. It appears that my bid for a dog might soon be replaced with a bid for a cat, despite the fact that I have developed a general hatred for all things feline. So hmm. Foiled again in the dog scheme?
Or maybe Suzanne would know whether [smallish] dog scent acts as a similar deterrent for mice...?

Anyhoo, mice or no mice, it is really splendid to have Andy back and to have a place of our own again. I am thoroughly enjoying drinking beer and building manly plant stands with him in the comfort of our circa-1975 flat-roofed carport. I am hoping to somewhat horrify the neighbors by appearing randomly in Daisy Duke shorts and cowgirl boots, just to create a bit of liveliness in the general vicinity. So far they mostly hermit about in their houses, so nothing's come of it yet; we do have one awesome hippie neighbor though, who has a big, ostentatious garden and looks like she may have done some cowgirl boots of her own in the past.

I didn't think we'd end out in the suburbs, but it's alright. We're actually really in the thick of it. We're immersed in suburbia in such a way that today a little old lady about a block away from our house spent ten minutes trying to sell me a $12 Tupperware cakeplate from about 1965. Don't ask me how I got myself into this situation, and don't ask me how I got out of it without dropping twelve bucks on a chunk of turquoise plastic party fabulousness. I was so mesmerized by her liver spots that I could hardly escape, let alone remember how I accomplished doing so.
But for what it's worth, living in suburbia is so much better than living on campus. I am loving it for now.