Here is the link to our Australia blog. Enjoy!

http://iserisinoz.blogspot.com

i hate everything

not true... i'm just grouchy today. turns out the one job i'm ideally qualified for is also the one where i don't even get a call for an interview, just a "sorry, we've hired someone" email.

thank god I'm leaving the country, or I'd be really depressed.

First Food Cart!

Flavor Spot, on Mississippi, also known as waffle sammitch heaven. I achieved zen, which it turns out is a perfect tertiary harmony between waffle, ham, and smoked gouda. It is to be desired, but not pursued.

Also: 2 big amazing waffle sammitches, a soda, and a coffee = $12. I love this town.

Here, have a fucking novel

Alright alright alright alright.

The skinny: I've been absent, but with good reason. The calendar follows.

Mid-August through the end of August -- probably the hardest I've worked since pulling all-nighters in the art studios in college and turning in wet paintings to exhibition judges. I was still full-time at the museum, and also working from the second I got out of work until at least midnight every night indexing a book for the museum's publications department. It consumed all my commuting time both ways, and also caused much of the moving stress to get shoved onto Scotty So Hotty, who dealt with a hugely unfair proportion of our packing, dealing with health insurance changes, and ironing out the details of our new living situation.

Aug. 21 -- both of our last days at work, exactly my two year anniversary at the museum. Also I found out only on Aug. 20 that they were going to be able to rehire my position, and I wasn't leaving them in the lurch. Catholic guilt assuaged.

Aug. 22 -- Awesome goodbye party! Dinner with friends at Campeche, my old favorite Mexican place (even though they no longer have the "platillo axteca" on the menu). Then we met up with lots and lots of people at a bar near our house. We picked it because it's a block from our house and we were semi-regulars... we stopped in usually at least once a week. However, there was another girl having her birthday party there that night, and she was kind of put-out that we had so many people there, and snottily remarked to Scotty, "how often are YOU here? I'm here every night." Well, besides being sad, it's a shame she doesn't want her favorite bar to make any money. Sorry. And the cops came and shut the place down at 2:30. Besides those two bits of oddness, we had so many people show up, and I felt lucky and honored to have all the friends we have. A lot of emotional goodbyeing.

Aug. 23-24 -- hurriedly finish up, edit, and send off index. Whew.

Aug. 24-25 -- pack pack pack pack pack. Only interrupted by Booger's new family coming to pick him up on Monday. So sad. We miss him.























Aug. 26 -- movers came. Asked us how to spell "sword." A very Iseri move after all. Spent the night with our kick-ass downstairs neighbors, who fed us breakfast and home-roasted coffee in the morning.

Aug. 27-31 -- borrowed TeeBee's hot little Audi to drive to Minnesota/Wisconsin for a wedding. Spent a night in Madison on the way there and the way back and ate awesome dinners with our friends there. Our friend R. is newly employed by UW-Madison's LGBT center, and she's awesome and will do awesome there, but oy! the teenage intellectual drama.... I don't envy her.

The night of the 28th, Scotty had Best Man Business to attend to, so I drove up from Red Wing to St. Paul to see Molly. We had our magic on. The owner of the restaurant bought us drinks. The bartender got sad when we both had wedding rings, after telling us there was nothing sexier than ladies who like good beer (he hasn't seen our beer bellies, I guess). We made our sweet Ethiopian waiter blush. The bartender gave us free lambic and we sang "Islands in the Stream" with a bunch of World War II vets. People high-fived us all the way out of the restaurant even though we were the worst singers there.

Needless to say, I chilled out at Molly's for an hour and a half and drank a lot of water before driving home. The drive home was fine, until I got to Red Wing and they were running a speed trap exactly at the spot where the speed limit went from 65 to 50. They clocked me at 62... holy shit, right? I saw 4 other cars get pulled over while I was getting my ticket. Total racket. I can only imagine what was going on on the other side of town, where it went from a 55 to a 30.

Anyway... I'm pretty paranoid about drunk drivers, and would have spent the night at Molly's if I weren't ok to drive. But that cop made me feel like a world-class criminal. He kept telling me how watery my eyes were (are drunk peoples' eyes watery? I've never noticed this) and HOW BAD I SMELLED like alcohol. Well, yeah... I only had a couple drinks several hours ago, but I did spend 4 hours in a bar. He had me get out of the car and do the whole test, telling me the whole time how he was seeing signs of impairment and how I needed to FOCUS. I was thinking, "Wow, I feel fine, but maybe I am drunk. Geez, I'm going to end up in jail. Man, it's really cold out here, and I can't stand on one foot like this, point my toe, stare at it, and count one-thousand-one through one-thousand-thirty even in real life." So it all came down to the breathalyzer, which, TAH-DAH I passed with flying colors. The cop was so disappointed. He shook it, and he really wanted to curse at it, but restrained himself. He kept saying, "But you REALLY SMELL like ALCOHOL." So sad for his quota, I guess.

I blame TeeBee's hot little car. A shuttle bus also tried to run me off the road the next day. People can't handle the hotness of that car.

The wedding Saturday was fun, although we decided it was definitely the whitest wedding we've ever been to. It was a tie for a while with a wedding in Maine last summer, but totally blew away the competition with a bluegrass band and square dancing at the end.

Aug. 31 -- stayed in Chicago with our lovely friends the Kingsleys, who are working their way through Gordon Ramsey's repertoire. They made us porkchops with a piquant sauce, an amazing pasta with leeks and bacon and mushrooms, a delicious salad, and flambé-d apples and pears. They can make all kinds of nice talk about food. All I could say was: holy shit!

Sept. 1-4 -- flew from Chicago to L.A. to see Tim and Annie. The city was smoky from all the fires to the north. We swam in the tiny pool in their building and met their funny neighbor who is in this video. We went to Jumbo's Clown Room and watched a creepy dude get multiple private dances. It wasn't quite as good as the time we went and saw the tall, ripped dancer do an amazing pole dance to "My Name Is Mud," but the night was given a big ol' leg-up by the presence of our wedding minister Buck F. Naked, and a cute and drunken Kimberlee Soo trying to steal jewelry from an Italian guy outside the bar. Also in L.A.: quality Tim and Annie time, and the Museum of Jurassic Technology again. They had new exhibits on cat's cradles and magnetism since I was there last. We were woken up on the morning of the 4th by the driver of our moving truck calling to say he'd be there to deliver on the 5th. A problem, since we weren't in the right city yet, and the range they gave us was the 8th through the 11th, which the 5th is solidly outside of. But they figured it out.

Sept. 4-7 -- flew to Boise on the 4th, after watching teenage girls giggling before and after their auditions at the audition space where Tim is working. Scotty's dad picked up up and drove us to Ontario. We spent the next couple of days swimming, playing with our niece Matilda, and seeing a lot of family. Family pictures! I hadn't been in one of those since I was about 12. Scotty's sister was catching a lot of flack over the weekend for dating a "terrorist" or "bioterrorist" (depending who you ask), also known as a Stanford educated man from Dubai. Cripes. Another family friend told her to "give the white boys a chance." I wonder if they ever said the same thing to Scotty's mom. So weird.

Sept. 7 -- drove down the Columbia River valley to Portland. Joe and Tony made a big ol' awesome dinner for us. Beautiful day.

Sept. 8 -- our mover (singular) came. He was still all put-out and flustered by the delivery mix-up but was one of those guys who just have to listen to until they run out of steam, and then he was fine. All our "fragile" boxes got loaded into one big unmarked wardrobe box. Awesome. Nothing seems to be broken though, so I guess it's alright. Most importantly, the bikes made it just fine.

And from that point on has been our first week in our new city. We're trying not to be the jerks who run around saying "Ooh! Everything is so CHEAP here!" So many food carts and inexpensive but good beer, and no sales tax to boot. There's a 10.25% improvement over Chicago right there. Also, Forbes released their report listing Chicago as the #1 most stressful city to live in. Can't say I'm surprised. We've now moved to #14! The air quality here is a 26 versus Chicago's rating of 2. I don't know what that means exactly, but I can fucking smell those 24 points, even with the occasional waft of hippie B.O.

We took the motorcycle out to the coast and bought taffy and ate clams. We discovered my new Mustang back seat is not taint friendly, sexist-ly built for ladybutt only. Poor Scotty. Scotty has some freelance work and I have a couple of possible indexing jobs on the horizon, but other than that it's a lot of lounging around, walking around, and trying to live cheap until we fly away to Australia on Oct. 21 for a month. More on that later.

Exciting news of all kinds

My workspace in the museum basement has been vastly classed up by this addition to the restroom door. You can imagine how classy that unlabeled bathroom was before.
























In other news, I thought this lady was waiting for the purple line, but I was wrong.

Quite a lot, thanks

These are the before and after phone lists for the library since we had layoffs. Ouch.

I also got a liturgical smackdown from the Catholic Church this week. My brother was going to ask me to be the godmother of my nephew, but it turns out you can't do that if you're divorced and haven't gotten an annulment from the Church... a process that takes about a year and costs $500, and where old celibate men form a diocesan tribunal to examine your past relationship and determine whether or not it was genuine. The process includes witnesses and everything. So, no thanks.

Anyway, in my case, it turns out that being divorced isn't the problem. MY problem is the actual marriages, which took place outside the Church without a special dispensation. So in order to be my nephew's godmother, I'd have to have both marriages invalidated by a bishop, and then Scotty and I would have to remarry in the Church, and undergo counseling to make sure I don't enter into any more unions with the same sloppiness I've shown in the past. As it is, since I'm Catholic, our marriage doesn't count. If we were both pagans, or dragons, or ligers, or *non-Catholics* we would count as married on the basis of getting married in good faith... but Catholics who marry outside the church enter into what is known as "grave sin." Wish my catechism classes had covered all this Canon Law crap.

The whole thing is really pretty interesting. The Church is saying (and not secretly), "Yes, we know Jesus said 'No divorce.' Here's how we get around that... your marriage ACTUALLY NEVER HAPPENED." It's a fairly creative argument.

Anyway... I'm gonna be the godmother of ROCK instead. Or a fairy godmother... I've never met a single one of those who's Catholic.

A worthy subject for post number 1000 rears it adorable little head!

We're aunts and uncles now!

I don't know why I keep saying that in plural, besides that "We're and aunt and an uncle," is so cumbersome.

Anyway. I'm not allowed to share his name because my parents don't know it yet, but here he is:

THE MOST PERFECT BABY IN THE UNIVERSE!!

























My being the first to know the name is just to get me to stop asking, "Have you named him Scotty yet? Have you named him Scotty yet?" And it also makes me feel better, being so far away.

#999

New album (to me): Awesome Car Funmaker, E for Everyone. It's not as great as Lovers and Monsters, but they're still more fun than any other band who has ever played with Cealed Kasket, maybe including Cealed Kasket. But how much attention have I been paying? Not enough. They broke up in February and I just now figured that out. Cry cry cry.

Another one the other day: A band from St. Louis called The Livers. They're two guys up front with guitars and a video projection behind them with the two of them playing drums and bass. Like this:






















Their video avatars occasionally became kittiez or Queen or Laverne and Shirley. It's hard to express exactly how well done and great it was. And they seem to be fully aware that it turns their live show into a TV show that they as two dudes on a stage can't really compete with. It's their own fault for making something too funny. It works anyway.

So, next post is #1000. I might not be able to live up to the hype.

Sometimes but not often

I'm such a nice librarian, people bring me chocolate.

Ch-check it out

I am vastly more wired than I was 3 days ago.

New computer, check.
New MP3 player with the restaurant app you can shake, check.*

*came free with computer. Somehow this = educational discount. Riiiight.

Anyway, it's fun. I'm building my new indexing website and taking pictures of myself that I don't dare take with my work computer in a room fulla coworkers.

I guess that makes it sound dirty. No, there's just more props.

As of this morning I am officially and legally a person with a longer name than I used to have. I finally took a day off work to go and get my spanking new married name (only a year late!). Social Security gave me a hyphen. The Secretary of State withheld a hyphen at the DMV. I wasn't about to wait around to get one, and I don't figure it'll matter. No one else has such and obscenely long name that they'll even be mistaken for me anyway.

Also, the Social Security office is a marvelous place for reminding you that you have no problems. The woman next to me told me that her husband walked out on her with a 3 week old baby, and then called DCFS to report her for revenge for something he felt she did. The state had decided she didn't have significant enough a source on inclome to support a child and was keeping her baby at the hospital. I don't know how much of it was exactly as she said it was, but it was obvious she was upset and has Real Problems. My hyphen and lack of hyphen, my existential angst, and my neck problems are all nicely in perspective now.

Also, I brought my wedding pictures for my dentist to see today (she asked last time I was there). She laughed and laughed and laughed at them. She laughed so much that she made her assistants answer the phone for her because she couldn't handle it. I am going to miss her when we go away in the fall. She's the big Persian mama I never had.