Author: Evan Stark

“Where have you been?”

“Walmart, Target, sometimes 7-11”

“I was just there – I didn’t see you at those places”

“Maybe you weren’t looking in the right place?”

“Don’t sass me, you have no right to sass me, I don’t deserve this, I am a MAN and you will treat me like one!”

“I am not sassing you, I am just stating the facts”

“Well for the last 29 years I have needed you and suddenly I find you and now I can’t live without you”

“You are always so dramatic, why are you always SO DRAMATIC”

“What I am is REAL, a little emotional at times, but real nonetheless. People don’t always get me, but I expected you to.”

“I am just a copper scrubber, how am I supposed to get you? You need to get a life.”

“Oh, just for that I am going to stuff your face in a huge pot of dirty soapy water and when I am done with you I am going to leave you filled with bits and pieces of scrambled eggs and bacon and you can just sit there on the counter until I get home from work – how do you like that?”

“Um, you dim wit, that is what I am supposed to do, I freakin’ live for that sort of thing”

“Is that so? Well then I am going to put you in the drawer and never use you again then!”

“Yeah right, you need me, now that you have found me you can’t live without me.”

“Now look who is being dramatic, you big drama queen, we’ll just see who needs who more.”

And that is pretty much how dish washing went last night. I couldn’t believe how handy those copper scrubbers could be for scrubbing away tough grime on a dirty pan. I burned some onions in a pan and let the pan soak for days scrubbing away every day using a green scrubber and finally I gave up – I actually considered throwing the pan away! Then I found the copper scrubber – I now thank God for the copper scrubber every day – EVERY DAY.

This week I am working at a remote location. I am one of those people that doesn’t like to use public restrooms. I realize that most of my readers are ladies and I imagine that your bathrooms are rosy fresh and free of newspaper ridden stalls and urine sprinkled floors. I imagine that you have snack machines and a juke box in your restroom while most of the time we don’t even have separators between the urinals for a little bit of privacy.

Today while at the remote location I found that I needed to take a grumpamoose and since I couldn’t just drive to my house like I normally do I had to go at work in the public restroom. Ugh. Gross.

These work restrooms were apparently built in the 1960’s when the average earthling was the size of a 4 foot Pygmy. Later they decided to install toilet paper dispensers the size of small hippo next to the toilet so the janitor would only have to change the toilet paper once a year – if that.

These enormous dispensers made it impossible for me (or anyone else I am sure) to sit on the toilet the normal way. I had to straddle the thing side saddle. This is not only uncomfortable but it does not allow for proper execution of the entire numero dos process. As we all know men are built differently than women and public toilets aren’t built nice and round like they are at your house. I found that the oval shaped toilet made for near impossible bathrooming in such an akward positions and therefore trying to take a sideways bathroom break was once again a hassle.

For some reason while I am sitting there I can’t help but think, “I so need to blog about this” and in the next thought I think about Ben of MIM and I think, “Oh, I bet he is the public restroom king and he would know what to do in this situation – too bad I don’t have him on speed dial.”

I finished my business albeit uncomfortably and departed with an additonal item to add to my list of why I don’t like public restrooms.

Reason #68 Pooping sideways.

I just popped over to the snack machine here at work with a craving for some peanuts and a diet coke and to my amazement there is a bag of chips that says, “HOOTERS HOT WING CHIPS!” in bold Hooters orange!

I can’t resist anything with the word Hooters on it (just kidding, I so enjoy being controversial, or maybe I am not kidding and I don’t want you to think that I am a perv) because I am a man and so I said to myself, Self, you must have these chips!

So I am eating them right now and they are delicious. There goes the diet out the window, I am so buying a huge bag of these as soon as I can find one.

http://www.taquitos.net/snacks.php?snack_code=2724

Here is the link so you can see the bag for yourself.

Our troop departed from Denton at 2000 hours and made our way down 35W bearing in the southern direction at 36 longitude and 856 latitude.

Our Ford 250 was fully stocked and loaded and we were ready for some serious partying in Austin. We did not have any homemade acid since Albertson’s was out of powdered bleach but fate has a way of keeping things in balance. We were barely on the road for 20 minutes when suddenly our trusty Ford flew off the road and into a large marijuana field and ignited the field on fire. Smoke billowed around us and instead of fleeing for safety we all inhaled deeply and got so stoned that we finally called 911 and asked them to come and help us and to please bring along 3 large pizzas.

Back on the road again after this momemtary set back we found that we no longer had our map with us and so we prayed to God in heaven to help us make our way to Austin and he obliged by giving us a pillar of cloud to follow by day and a pillar of fire by night. As a way of showing God our thankfulness we all decided to change our names to Biblical names for the entire weekend. We became Zephaniah, Malachi, and Habakuk. We farkled (rock, paper, scissors) for the name of Malachi since it was the coolest and Cody ended up winning the coveted sobriquet.

We arrived at the late hour of 1200 and we were all pleasantly surprised to find that our apartment/condo/flat was extremely post-modern deconstructionist neo-classical in design and therefore it suited us comfortably and fashionably.

Friday found us sleeping in and breakfasting late. We were directed to Kerby Lane for breakfast and found their fare to be more than appetizing. I was so lost in the goodness of my food that I misdirected my passion toward the waitress and had to be escorted from the building in handcuffs.

After a long discussion with the police I was finally released and so we made our way to the Capitol building. I was so overcome by Austin and its overall hippie feel that I decided that just for the weekend I would give up my Hebrew name Habakuk and change it to Dew Drop. I also made Dumas pull over so I could grab a tie-dyed t-shirt and a corn cob pipe.

We took plenty of pictures of our wonderful State Capitol and then that night we went to eat dinner at a place called “Waterloo”. Famous for their record selling I personally think they should have stuck with records and left the food and restaurant industry to those proprietors that know what they are doing in the kitchen. My food was yuck, but we still had a good time because I got into a fight with the smug waiter that wanted to only give me a 10% discount on my food. Before it was over with I ended up deep fried and battered like an over-sized onion ring but you should have seen the other guy.

Saturday started out lazily as the rain fell down in buckets and made for a wonderfully blissful sleep. After we breakfasted we went kayaking on the Colorado River where I got many a blister on my hands from rowing like a mad man. Cody and Dumas decided to try to out run me numerous times, but in the end I caught them and I force fed them to a large snapping turtle. (okay, not really, but I wanted to)

Late Saturday night we went to eat Noodles and party on Sixth Street. I shook my money maker more than once and had a great time. Sixth Street is cool – the streets are full of people after midnight and they eventually had to shut them down.

The trip went really well and part of this story I embellished here and there, but only a little bit.

Dumas, Cody, and I had a great trip and you can see all the photos here:

http://www.postednote.com/austin.htm

Well, Austin was great and I am so lethargic this morning that I am surprised that I am even able to type this… check back later for updates and pictures, and when I say later that means like tomorrow as today has been busy and Blogger just now published a bunch of my comments and Posted Note had some issues earlier and then I couldn’t get the pictures off of the camera and so I am sumo behind on my blogging today.

I have missed you guys though! I can’t wait to show you guys all the pictures, prepare to explode with envy!