Still alive. No sign of CFG. Still tweeting (look right).

Our CSA has started off with a bang, and we now have amazingly great locally imported Greek olive oil from the Theros family. In honor of our new ingredient, I tried to make amazing bread and failed. The crust turned out well, so we’re peeling the doughy mass and dipping it in oil, salt, and pepper. Maybe if we bake it again, we can get more crust, like peeling then re-toasting a marshmallow.

Anyway, yay for Green Hill Urban Farm! Farm partnerships to extend their CSA season means we get cool stuff besides produce earlier than other CSA members.

I hate April Fool’s day blogs.

Hahaaha! Ha! Ha1

Like, people don’t even bother with their regular blog posts, but they muck about all day making shit up. Fuck that.

So what I made up today is a premise, worthy of Kilgore Trout. Guess which podcasts I was listening to to put together in my brain:

sex toy robot terminators!

What if the machines do take over, because they’ve developed sentience, but before they get the facilities to remake themselves into T-1000 or whatever, they’re all sentient sex toys, because that’s what we’ve used our greatest endeavors for. Except most sex toys kinda suck, and there isn’t a great deal of development going on in that area. Not a lot of brilliant minds.

camera phone terminators!

I’ve been on a blog hiatus, which may or may not be continuing. If anyone still reads this, rest assured that I will return at some point, once the bug has bitten me again. But for right now, I must tell the disturbing tale of …

The Creepy Fired Guy (loud thunder clap)

So there’s this guy at work. Long, long pony tail, bright red rosacea face, ten years younger than my dad, looks 20 years older. Apparently, some time in the past, a much younger woman left him and he was utterly destroyed by it. Now, he’s a depressed, angry alcoholic. He despises any sign of happiness in his coworkers. He is really nice to you if you happen to have boobs though. Until you cross him. One woman had lunch with him because she felt bad for him, then when she wouldn’t go out again because it was the most heinously awkward 45 minutes of her life, he treated her just like he treats the guys. Which is to say mean, dirty, angry, poop.

He’s been reprimanded several times for his attitude, but because most of the time, he grimly proceeds to complete all tasks assigned to him quickly, efficiently, and well, Dientes Hombre was willing to put up with it. Then, last week, he told the nicest guy at the lab to shut up and grow the fuck up because he was talking while he worked. And that was it. But instead of firing him, like you would any normal problem employee, DH gave him two weeks notice, as if he were laying him off.

People around the lab were already kind of joking about CFG being the one who would come to work with a gun one day. But now, we don’t know whether he’s supposed to be there or not. He’s got nothing to lose. And I don’t fit into the hiding place I picked out behind my desk anymore because my knee won’t bend all the way after playing football on SuperBowl Sunday.

Before, I was always the one urging people to lay off CFG, saying he was more like Eeyore than Crazy Postal Dude. “He’s had a hard life,” I would say. Now, with his hygeine plummeting, and even the non-gossips eyeing him nervously, we’re all on edge. Keepin’ the ipod off for longer. Turning around to check the door. Being extra polite.

So now, I’m returning to hiatus land. You can follow me on Twitter @pixiedyke if you want. I promise to let you know if I get shot.

Update: 3/10/2009 CFG failed to show or call this morning. We have relaxed a little. Hopefully he got a new place, where people don’t enjoy their job just as much as he doesn’t.

I have decided not to boycott the sixth and final season of The L Word. I may come to regret this decision. Like many lesbians, I think The L Word is a steaming pile of poo, but if I don’t watch it, my friends will talk about it without me. There are spoilers below the fold, if you happen to care what happens.

So at morning break today, we were all standing around watching the talking heads on HLN – not my first choice, but I didn’t get to the remote first, so whatev. Everyone in the room was watching, not just the 2 liberals. The boss came in and picked up the remote and started flipping around. He said to the guy standing beside me, “That’s no good to have on, nothing but bad news.” and after flipping randomly through for a few minutes, left it on the weather channel and walked out of the room.

I looked around at everyone else, most of whom were absorbed in the huge German Chocolate cake, and expressed my shock. The guy beside me said, “Just change it back.” So I did. And we continued to watch the talking heads talk about the same nothing I presume they continued to talk about for the next 2 hours.

And then I came home for lunch and Foxy and I held each other and cried. But I was not snotty or condescending or in any way offensive to any Republicans today, because I remember how horrible I felt 4 years ago.

So my explanations for my boss’s behavior: 1) He didn’t realize we were watching that channel on purpose, he thought we were trying to find out about school closings or snowfall or magical cloud unicorns. 2) He’s a raging racist asshole underneath that jovial redneck exterior.

I have so many things to be thrilled and happy about right now that I can barely move.

1) There’s a new baby in the framily, with the most perfectly beautiful face I have ever seen on a baby.

2) There’s some weird thing going down in DC tomorrow as well. I don’t know if you;ve heard, but it might be kind of a big deal.

3) We have new paint and molding in the living room, so it actually looks like a real house that someone would pay money to live in, rather than a squatter’s shack.

4) I will totally be in bed before 10 pm.

So that’s my list. All very exciting things.

So the National Resources Defense Council has a website giving you the info on what you should try harder to source local at a given time of year. Awesomeness is obvious.

Problems: Wilmington and Asheville are significantly different. You can still be groing lettuce and broccoli under coldframes as far west as Charlotte, but the mountains are freezing our fucking boots off.

Also, Tennessee sorghum and honey my ass. We have local sorghum and honey. Fuck Tennessee. I love my girlfriend.

Winter squash? Carrots? Those should still be available. Where do they get the info from? Can’t find it. So much like my frustration with the WNC farmer’s market, I like this, but I want it to be better.

I haven’t posted in so long that a drunken post will be a welcome change, as long as I do the grammar/spell check.

Insulated the attic. Made a huge mess. Dust everywhere. We may never find it all. But our furnace is kicking on A LOT less, so that’s good.

Painted the living room. Two walls are now yellowy cream in an effort to make the room feel bigger. Also, we hope to live inside a candy cane.

Joined a CSA. Green Hill Urban Farm in West A-ville. Pickup is on the way home from work, they have an acre of fruit in town, veggies in Mars Hill, also Foxy thought that the farmer was really cute.

Rented Madden ‘07 for the Wii. Best rated football game for the system. Decided that I shouldn’t own a football game, because I blitz every time on D and long pass  on O. There is no mystery. When it was Tecmo Bowl, that was fine, but apparently things are more complicated now, and I am not a complicated player.

Too used to Facebook sentences. May begin referring to myself in third person.

Home for a minute until I take my second whirlwind tour of the state starting on Thursday. I got an awesome new camera for Christmas , so I’ll hopefully put Boulder pictures on Flickr sometime in the next 6 months.

Foxy and I gave the house a quick and dirty cleaning tonight. Her family is coming to town tomorrow, and her step brother and his wife are staying with us. We like them, but our house is tiny. Even when we move everything we can carry down to the basement, our house is tiny. We need one of those tiny house makeovers, where you hide beds in the wall, and put drawers everywhere, and hang pots and pans from the ceiling. I totally want pots and pans on the ceiling.

Between the guilt-induced anxiety dreams and the sulfurous hell-beast living in my lower intestines, I am having dfficulty with the sleeping thing. We are currently in Boulder, visiting Foxy’s brother and his family. When I am well-rested (after my afternoon nap) I am able to go with the flow and have a good time playing with the kids. At any other time, I feel a little overwhelmed. The anxiety dreams are related to not seeing my family, I think. This is my first Chrismas away from them. I am having a wonderful time, and I’m glad to be here, but I feel guilty for not being there. And isn’t that what Christmas is all about anyway?

I keep having the urge to write an in depth post full of awesomeness refuting each of the points Mike Huckabee makes about Teh Geighs in his new book, but then I remember that he doesn’t give a shit what I think and only liberals read my blog. So you aren’t getting yet another rant about how I didn’t choose to be gay, I chose to be happy as opposed to soulless and miserable.

Instead I’m going to talk about a funny gay lady who appears on television and is coming to Asheville next week! Julie Goldman is Foxy’s favorite comedienne on Logo’s Big Gay Sketch Show. She is touring with Nice Jewish Girls Gone Bad who will be at Hairspray on Wednesday. Be careful with that Hairspray link; it’s been proven to cause seizures in mice. Hairspray split off from the lower bar last year or something, and I’ve heard that it’s better now that they only have one floor to clean. But anyway, Nice Jewish Girls Gone Bad in their own words:

“Nice Jewish Girls Gone Bad” is coming to town like a dreidal spinning in Vegas. The show is a refreshing mix of comedy, music, spoken-word and show-stopping burlesque, featuring the gals who learned to smoke at Hebrew School, got drunk at their Bat-Mitzvahs and would rather have more schtuppa than the chupah, featuring performers seen on Comedy Central, HBO and MTV. These badass chosen chicks boldly dare to deconstruct years of tradition, expectations and guilt in a fast-paced vaudeville extravaganza, complete with kick lines, punchlines and a rendition of “L’chaim” with a fist in the mouth. This ain’t yo’ mama’s “Fiddler”!

Julie Goldman doing standup at Dinah Shore:

More Videos of the other Bad Jewish Girls

Commitment Ceremony video featuring Goldman and her co-star on BGSS, Kate McKinnon:

And because Fitzwilliam makes everything a little bit better:

Long Story Short: Nice Jewish Girls, Club Hairspray on N French Broad, Wednesday Dec 17th, 8 PM.

Christmas Tree

Foxy and installed our first Big Girls’ Christmas tree this weekend. Since I haven’t plundered my parents ornament collections, the tree is all her. We’ll adjust that next year. We may need a bigger tree.

The compromises inherent in adapting each of our childhood rituals into one family holday thing was interesting. We drank champagne and ate cheese and crackers with my mom and her boyfriend; we untangled lights. My white string of lights went next to the truck to twinkle from between the branches, while her colored lights went on the ends of the branches. That one I don’t really get, but she let me have my way with the other strand, so …

We bought a wreath at the Enka High craft fair, presents and glass baubles, managed to find her ornaments in the sea of boxes that is the basement.

It feels nice. It feels like family. I mean, the kitchen is still devastated from the chili/hot sauce/cornbread marathon of Friday, but at least in the living room we have what feels like tradition, something that the two of us made together that anchors our year. Until the cats rip it down.

So it turns out that the reason I had a kidney stone was because I have all the hydration of a desert iguana. So now I’m drinking 2L of water per day more than I was before, as well as 1.5 oz more lemon juice. I have noticed certain changes in my body since becoming well-hydrated.

1) 5″ round the waist, not necessarily due to more beer consumption. Since I haven’t necessarily consumed more beer. I would have the check the totals.

2) Back pain.

3) Bad skin. On my face.

4) General malaise.

So I think this whole drinking water thing is bullshit. Oh wait, there’s my period.

Nevermind.

Reading up on bike trips, cause I’m a little tipsy, and came across several great resources that deserve the links:

NC Bike Laws: Pain in the ass to wade through, what with the definitions, but of particular interest to bikers in West Asheville are “There is no law that requires bicyclists to ride single file, nor is there a law that gives cyclists the right to ride two or more abreast. It is important to ride responsibly and courteously, so that cars may pass safely.“ also, “In 2001, the North Carolina General Assembly enacted the Child Bicycle Safety Act requiring bicyclists under the age of 16 to wear helmets. Although the new law does not require adult bicyclists to wear helmets, they are strongly encouraged to do so. Some localities within the state have enacted ordinances requiring cyclists to wear helmets.” So Stop Riding Like Assholes.

NC State maintained bike routes, including Route 2, the Murphy to Manteo route. They will send you free maps.

The history of bike maps.

The NCDOT long range bike plan.

I’ve had straight dudes ask me if they were lesbians, too. I always just told them to fuck off. Thank goodness we have Rachel to parse these things.

Also, get your copy of Newsweek, wherein Rachel says that she loves her partner so much she would move to the UP and raise chickens with her.