trash talk

Thursday, dec. 20, 2007   |   0 comments

I’ve been feeling mildly out of sorts these days, surely just a case of end-of-year, countdown-to-forty internal grumbling — not blue, really, more a low-grade “what’s going to happen?” crossed with a pinch of “sigh.” One of the ways you can tell the spring in my step is a little sprung is that I start fantacizing about cutting all my hair off, even though I’ve been struggling to grow it out for so very long. Even though I’m headed to Utah in January (Sundance!) and my cold, pale neck will almost surely regret the loss of warmth all that hair and hair and hair provides. Even though I’ve been scouring the archives of The Sartorialist and can’t help but note that the street’s cutest fashionists all have long, long hair. Even though short hair is way more expensive than long hair because you need more product to keep it flat and you need to get it trimmed way more regularly than the every-six-months schedule I’m currently on. And even though I know from sad experience that cutting off all my hair in a pique always leaves me looking and feeling worse — some of you may recall the jellyfish I wound up with in my last post-lay-off slump (not the first one, the second one): giant puffy mushroom top with greasy tendrils along the back and sides.

But still! That great sound and feel of scissors hank-hank-hanking through a wrist-thick tail of hair calls out to me.

The only thing holding me back right now is the fact that I just ordered myself multiple sets of trash ties, the new genius hair-harnessing product from one of my regular Inter-reads, Heather Bailey:

I love that Heather just up and created a product like that, with professional packaging and models and photoshoots and everything. Real, actual people can make their own real, actual products? That’s so inspiring! And how awesome that Trash Ties not only hold back thick, thick hair like mine, but they also have the power to hold me back from an-almost-surely-disastrous hair accident. Thanks, Trash Ties!

heigh ho, silver, away

Tuesday, dec. 11, 2007   |   0 comments

Walking with Marco to his car after the Literary Death Match (which went well, I think? aside from the shrieking , booze-swept lady in the audience?):

Marco, limping slightly: So…I have some good news and some bad news.

Evany: Oh boy.

Marco: So the bad news is, the “Check Engine” light came on in your car again.

[This, after the light coming on and the mechanic fixing the car on two separate occasions already.]

Evany: Groaning, stomping noises.

Marco: But the good news is, I got rear-ended today, and your car is totally totaled!

Marco spent the next few weeks calling the rear-ender’s insurance company twenty thousand million times, and after much badgering they finally sent out a claims adjuster, who made an appointment with Marco to come take pictures of the battered car at 11am the next Saturday. When, at 11:15, she still hadn’t arrived, Marco called her cellphone. After a handful of rings, she groggily picked up the phone and hoarsely reported that she’d be about an hour late. When she finally arrived, a bedraggled woman with a Mohawk and a filthy messenger bag moaning about her rough night, Marco politely asked what it was that she’d been doing all night, expecting a long, lurching story filled with bourbon and flat tires and sidewalk brawling and emergency rooms. “Oh, you know…laundry,” she said wearily.

The woman took some photos of the car and told Marco she’d submit her report by Monday…Wednesday at the latest. When we hadn’t heard anything by the end of the week, though, Marco called again and discovered that the insurance company hadn’t heard from the adjuster yet, shrug. Marco called back the next day, shrug, and the next…he started leaving long messages of nothing but the crunching sounds of entire bowls of cereal being consumed. But it wasn’t until we threatened to start billing them for rental cars (nothing lights an ass-fire like consequences, hoo) that they finally, finally scrambled to get the report from the adjuster and finally, finally returned Marco’s calls to report that the car was, indeed, officially totaled. And the very day before the city was scheduled to tow it away, the insurance company came and carted the crushed little Silver Tooth far, far away away.

And then last week the check finally, finally arrived, weighing in at a clean $138 more than I initially paid the car six or whatever months ago. Lemon; lemonade!

Now we just have to get the insane fly-by-night, laundry-tired insurance people to pay for all the time off Marco has had to take off from work to nurse his sad, bruised back, fun. In summary: yay for do-over insurance checks! Pray for Marco’s poor little back! And don’t ever, never let Evany and her faulty mysticism do the deciding when it comes to buying a car.

I'm right here!

Monday, oct. 1, 2007   |   0 comments

Sorry, sorry, sorry for the blogio silence, it’s just that I somehow got myself a real job, not at the kids detective agency (pictured above), sadly (though how amazing would that be?), but at a big-girl bank by the name of Wells Fargo. And while I like the work, and I’m thrilled by the regular dollars, the sudden onslaught of regular working hours and meetingsmeetingsmeetings and the office coffee and the “conduct training,” it all just sort of threw me for a loop for awhile there. Basically all I could manage to do for the last four months was:

6am: Get up.
6:10: Drink cups and cups of ambition alone in the quiet still-dark.
6:20: NPR.
6:30: Walk the squeeziest dog in the world.
7:30: Leap into the shower
7:32: Apply makeup (what? who?).
7:40: Iron slacks.
7:45: Don slacks.
8: Walk to the casual carpool pickup spot (each unique snowflake of a ride described in 140 characters or less via Twitter).
9: Work, work, work (right alongside the great and awesome and awesomely talented Annie, lucky!).
5:30pm: Walk to the bus station.
6:10: Disembark at the top of the Oakland Rose Garden.
6:10 to 6:15: Walk through the Oakland Rose Garden, sniffing and smiling.
6:20: Home again.
7: Eating.
9:30: Yawning.
10: Bed.

Notice that there’s no naps in that schedules, none. Weaning myself off the 3pm nap was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do — there were some real zombie days in the beginning there, lots of shuffling and “huh?“ing.

When I was first considering taking the job, a friend of a friend (who works at the company) said hopeful things about how the hours are sane enough that you can actually do other things with your life, but he warned that it would take “about four months” before I would work up the stamina to be able to do anything beyond stare at things during my off hours. And today? Is my exact four-month anniversary! And so, Hi.

In other news, I’m back to desperately writing about Desperate Housewives. And! I appear to have gotten myself shangboozled into another reading (and ohh, just typing those words gave me a wooze of panic):

Opium’s Literary Death Match
Friday, October 12, doors open at 7pm
The Swedish American Hall
Tickets: $15 (price includes the latest copy of Opium)

The unfairly talented Daniel Handler will be anchoring the lineup, along with Wesley Stace and Gary Kamiya (whom I’ve never met, but I really have a good feeling about those guys). And of course I’m going to be there, all drunk and sweaty and nerve-poisoned, and who wants to miss out on that? Really, I could use your strong, honest-work-coarsened hands, both to offer soothing pats/sippables and to bring the noise when it comes to the clap-o-meter portion of the competition. Here’s hoping!

Also: My good friends The Kids Are Alright have written the world a song about blogs, and love. You’re welcome!

scenes from a mall

Wednesday, may. 23, 2007   |   0 comments

SCENE ONE
Amazonian in Forever 21, holding up one of those pairs of keychain-sized short-short shorts that are inexplicably in right now, to her friend: “Are these too long, you think?”

SCENE TWO
Dad, sitting alone in the magnificent and cacophonous Sun Valley Mall food court, almost surely waiting for his embarrassed daughters to return. His head dips once, twice, and then ahhhhhll the way down into full-on slumber.

SCENE THREE
A 15-year-old girl teeter-tottering around in 5-inch heels, a gold lame ruched top, and no pants…completely sober.

SCENE FOUR
Having recently ruined my Sidekick II by overzealously using a safety-pin to clean the dirt out of the cracks and holes in the Listening Area, thereby puncturing its eardrum and causing all callers to sound like Peanuts parents accompanied by subtle feedback screeching, I went into the T-Mobile store to discover if enough time had passed for me to qualify for an upgrade. And I did! Only even with the upgrade, the Sidekick III was going to set me back $200, which seemed way too hard. So I let the nice T-Mobliler talk me into the Sidekick ID ($100 with rebate). It’s cheaper because it has no Bluetooth, which…whatever. It also doesn’t have a camera, which is fine because I never really use the Sidekick camera because it’s pretty sucky. But, more importantly, the Sidekick ID has a really great street name: it’s AKA “the SKID,” which is entirely awesome, and also makes way for lots of pun times, like “I’m sorry, I was only SKIDding” or “SKIDs these days!” Best of all, my purchase enabled this particular one-act play:

[STAGE DIRECTION: Evany hands the T-Mobiler her credit card to pay for the Sidekick ID.]

T-Mobiler: Thanks. Can I see your ID?

[STAGE DIRECTION: Evany hands the T-Mobiler her new Sidekick ID. T-Mobiler stares at her, totally puzzled.]

Evany, reaching into her wallet for her identification: Ha, ha! Who’s on first!

T-Moblier: That’s funny, how you said “Who’s on first.”

I kept waiting for him to finish with the story of why it was so funny that I mentioned “Who’s on first,” like maybe there was a big “Who’s on first” reenactment at the latest T-Mobile employee jamboree? But that was it. That’s just his style, he notes the funny and then he cites the essence of that funny, all very earnestly and without a trace of sarcasm. I love him!

It reminds me of the time Jill and I were on our milkshake tour of the country, and we stopped to sample the famous raspberry shakes in Utah’s Bear Lake region. I was happily sipping and checking my email on my Sidekick when a man came up to me and said, “Is that a blackberry?” And I said, “No, this is raspberry.” The guy, all confused: “No…uh, I mean your little computer there.” Me: “Hahaha!”

and you were there, and you, and you!

Saturday, apr. 28, 2007   |   0 comments

I just woke up from a terrible dream! I was sitting there, looking down at my legs, when all of a sudden I noticed that I had a thatch of pubic hair growing behind each knee. And I didn’t get upset or try to shave it off or anything. I just dream-sighed to myself, “Oh, so this is what getting old looks like.”