This weekend at home was an actual pleasant one. Go figure.

* I now have a new favorite restaurant in the olde hometowne, Crazy Buffet. It's a Chinese/Japanese buffet of VERY good food. Sushi, cream cheese wontons, crab, dim sum, tons of dessert... OMIGOD YUM. Food heaven.

* While at Crazy Buffet, we ran into the guy who owns the lone bookstore in town, and I ended up having a conversation with him about the Portable Curmudgeon books. I don't think I've ever had such a book-geeky conversation with anyone in person before- how random is that?

* I got my hair cut and redyed. I went in and complained at great whiny length about how I was sick of it being flat all the time, so he put layers into it. I am not sure what to make of it. The first day when it was curled it came out pretty Farrah, the second day it looked good and fluffy. The third day, today (don't look at me like that, you know you don't have to wash your hair for awhile after the hairdresser does it), it's back to being pretty damn flat again.

Normally I'd probably be having a cow about my hair. (I did used to be the girl who refused to let anyone touch her with scissors for like 10 years.) But...meh, I can't be arsed to care any more. The redye color looks good and the rest will grow out in a few months if I don't like it. Whatever.

* I went to go see the play Ragtime this weekend. It was very good! I had no idea what it was about beforehand, and figured with a name like "Ragtime" it was one of those plotless musicals along the lines of "Ain't Misbehavin'" or "Tomfoolery" (though in the case of Tomfoolery, plotlessness is no problem!). But, nope. If you're anywhere near Oakland next weekend, I HIGHLY recommend you go.

I really liked it. There's not a whole lot of musicals out there that I think are exceptionally well staged or crafted or plotted in any unusual way. Most of them seem to me to kind of be like "The King and I" (i.e. what we get to see next month. Mom loves it. Me, not so much), kinda cute and coy and sappy with a depressing moment once in awhile. They don't make you think about what was going on. The only other musicals I can think of that really blew me away on this level were Into the Woods (though the second act depresses me) and City of Angels. I liked it well enough that afterwards, I was even thinking of reading the book it's based off of, despite its "classic" status. (Disclaimer from a bitter English major here: I almost never seem to like books written before I was born. Usually they seem to depress me.) However, reading the VERY mixed reviews on Amazon the next morning changed my mind on that. A lot of them were "I loved the play, hated the book." The review from Ellie Fullerton here in particular sounded like something I could have written about many other books. So...never mind on that idea, I'd probably end up hating the book after all. Bleah.

* Mom is getting all of the pipes in the house replaced starting today. This meant that I had to heeeeeeeeeeelp her clean out every sink area in the house. I was pretty well displeased at being roped into this because, well, you know why: we get into nasty screaming fights.

But, Mauricio agreed to come over and help. And ohmigod, he fucking worked miracles. He plunked down in front of the kitchen sink and started pulling stuff out, and he actually made her throw stuff out. He wouldn't let her keep every tiny sponge he found down there, he wouldn't let her save nasty pieces of plastic and instructions for how to assemble a dish drainer, he wouldn't let her keep anything that was wet.

Sample discussion:

Mom: "But can't I keep that Mason jar? It's really cute. It'd make a good glass to drink water out of."
M: "I'd rather drink out of anything BUT that."
Mom: "But I could use it as a flower vase!"
M: "I found four vases down here already. It's not a cute vase. You have better. Throw it out."
(Meanwhile, I was laughing hysterically.)

And she'd actually throw some shit out! It only took them 3 1/2 hours to do the entire house! Had I been left alone with her, she would have yelled at me for not doing it "right", refused to throw anything out, and we wouldn't have finished the task at all during the day. Hell, we were done in time to get dinner at Crazy Buffet again, even.

The sad thing was that after that dinner, I got carsick. Not to the point of puke, mind you, but enough nausea to make having to spend what amounted to 2+ hours in the car REALLY not fun. The one good thing was that Mom even agreed that carsick + having to smell hospital smell wasn't going to help keep me from puking any, so I got to sit out in the hospital lobby for over an hour. After an hour, the carsick went away and I was quite happy...and then it came back about five seconds after the car started up again. Bleech.

I also didn't get home until 10:30. The nice thing about M being with her was that he could keep her awake on the ride home so I didn't feel obligated to have her sleep over again. The bad thing was that then they were both going through my apartment telling me how to rearrange all of the furniture- and I was way too carsick to even want to listen to that.

previous entry - next entry
archives - current entry