somewhere, over Roy G. Biv…

Went to the second session of Flash I tonight, and the instructor once again failed to show up for class. Somebody who works there came and talked to us all for a while about rescheduling everything. The instructor’s ride apparently bailed on her. They told us that they’re going to get somebody new to teach (a Macromedia employee, and apparently someone who will show up when they are supposed to) and they’re going to try to reschedule it for next week and the week after.

We got new dishes, 40% off at Pier One. They’re oh-so-gorgeous! They’re magically delicious! This picture doesn’t do them justice. They are really more of a deep rich maroon color with flecks of black and some green, and the white in the picture is actually more of a deep cream color with dark crackle lines. They are thick, and golden stoneware. Now what I want to do is get some takeout Chinese food from Tam’s or PeiWei and sit out on the back porch with our new dishes and some hot saké! This sounds appealing also partially because the weather is finally taking a turn for the better. Today was pretty blazingly hot but we’re supposed to have two cool fronts come through in the next several days, dropping temperatures into the 70s for highs on my birthday.

Speaking of fan-fucking-tastic weather, we did have afternoon rain today, and at 5:00 there was the most fabulously gorgeous completely hemispherical double rainbow in the sky. From some of the flatter parts of the city I could see it all the way from ground to ground. There was a slightly less intense inverted rainbow sitting above it. I wish I’d had the camera!!! Doc said that rainbows don’t photograph well.

Dishes and rainbows. Yeesh, I sound like such a girl.

Okay, more stories from my upcoming book of Memoirs That Interest Only Me…

Some random things about living in Houston, Texas, which I survived from the ages of birth until seven:

Houston is very hot and sticky and we lived near a bayou (like a large stinky creek with man-made concrete sides). Consequently, we had lots of snakes in the area. I remember at least once an ambulance showing up at our house to trap and take away a very poisonous snake. I’m not sure why an ambulance, but OK. Cats get fire trucks; snakes get ambulances. I thought it was pretty cool. Maybe it was because there was always the possibility of someone getting bitten. One time Mom went out to get the mail, leaving me inside with the front door open, and (the way I remember it) when she walked back to the house there was a large water moccasin sitting on the front porch between her and me.

I hate snakes.

In our backyard, which I remember as being very large although it was probably just because I was very small (yes, Katy was once small; I was not birthed at six feet tall), we had various fun things to play with including a big patch of pampas grass. Now I think that pampas grass is incredibly ugly, but we had actually hollowed out the back of it along the fence and we’d go crawl in there to play or hide. It was probably full of bugs, and maybe even snakes. (Man, I sound like Such a Grown Up, don’t I?!) We also had a garden behind the garage that Mike and I liked to dig in with shovels. We planted peanuts in the flowerbeds along the garage wall, and those peanuts kept coming year after year.

I had a dog named Anthony. He was a white cocker spaniel with reddish-brown markings (which I think is called party-colored, for whatever reason). Dad did not like animals, did not want pets ever ever ever, but somehow mom talked him into letting me have a puppy. I was so happy to have a dog. I used to sing to him about his soft floppy ears: “scratch behind the ears, does that feel good my dear? Anthony, you’re in puppy heaven, you know that.”

You can see why I’m not a lyricist.

We had to give Anthony away when we moved to Dallas. I’m not sure why, actually, since most people don’t give away their dogs when they move, but I didn’t question it. I was upset, sad, angry of course. I guess that I thought that’s just what people did when they moved. Dogs didn’t move with people.