Squash-A-Bug

Had another road test; hit the curb; failed it. This seems to surprise many of you who took your road tests in these sleepy little suburbs or in DMV parking lots, and not at the toughest DMV test site in the toughest state in the union, but, yeah. It's hard. And it's a real fucking bummer to fail the test, because I don't have my own car to drive at the test site, so it costs big U.S. Auto School bucks whenever this happens. At least I didn't cry tears of frustration in front of Lester (though my face got a bit pinched up).

The Rase bought me If I Should Fall From Grace With God. Like I think I've mentioned, I spent a lot of my childhood listening to The Pogues and only realized embarrassingly recently that it wasn't just weird "world music" that my dad had scooped up somewhere. I'm listening to the album at work and it's stirring up these really vivid memories of sitting on the warm windowsills with the built-in radiators in my parents' apartment on 4th St. and staring out the thick, gritty chickenwire windows at snow falling on the Old Merchant's House. Maybe a cup of hot tea and a notebook. Orange streetlights. That's the setting when I think of my childhood in Winter. Why Turkish Song Of The Damned was in constant rotation in my dad's stereo during the holidays is a bit hard to fathom, but, you know. Don't even get me started on Fairytale Of New York. I basically can't even listen to that song in public; it's just too much.

KT had a little birthday party at The Friends' house on Saturday, and someone got hold of a camera. I think this sums up my relationship with Tom pretty nicely:


I've bought a ticket to Germany for next week, so expect to see me next week... if you're fixing debian-installer bugs in Gutersloh. That includes at least a dozen of you, I know. Razor and Chrissy Rodney kind of crapped out Headliners-taking-Europe-wise, so I'm Trying to arrange spending a few days with M-Biddy in Budapest, where he's been attending Math Camp for the past ten years. Why hasn't he solved tic-tac-toe yet?!