On totally avoiding cannibalism despite a dead battery and a car accident. Plus, bathroom graffiti pictures.

Tuesday, on my birthday, my car stranded me and a friend on the feeder road of an interstate freeway:I'm smiling because I had a friend with me. And plus we were within walking distance of a restaurant, so I was already certain that we weren't about to run out of food and end up resorting to cannibalism or anything.This guy stops to help us and he thinks we need a jump start. But he makes sparks start flying off my battery. He does this a lot of times. Then he tells us it's the alternator.

Triple A comes to tow the car away, but for kicks my friend asks about trying a jump start. Sure enough, it works!

All is well for two more days. Then yesterday while trying to turn right at an intersection, the car ahead of me begins to move forward. I'm all thinking that she's headed through the intersection because her car has moved forward. So I look to my left and decide it's safe for me to go too. But unfortunately for me, I start to move my car forward before my gaze gets all the way back to see that she actually didn't go.

She stopped.

And then I stopped, because her bumper was in my way.

This time I was not smiling at all on the side of the road. Not smiling at all. I was fairly unhappy, actually.

When I told the entire story to my sweet pea she said, "At least you were in a cute outfit while you were on the side of the road!" And it's totally true; I was in a cute outfit. Unfortunately my friend wasn't around to take a picture.

And then like 10 minutes after I run into someone, some other guy comes so very, very close to running into me! And then my car almost didn't start again that afternoon and I think from now on I should just take the bus.

Here are some more honeymoon pictures of Austin bathroom graffiti. Click to read a little better:
Apologies to Bob Schneider, but this next one is my favorite. In case you can't read it to the very end it says:

-Bob Schneider - Don't be such a man-diva. It doesn't become you. Ellen
-I'll second that!
-Well he's not going to see it in here!
-Yes he will its the closest Jon to the stage
-he's also a man and therefore uses the MEN'S room
-Actually, Bob is the anti-Tin Man, full of heart Dorothy

The problem with this type of honeymoon pictures is that actually when you go to print them out for your new mother in law, there's not really all that much to give her.

I'm Writing Myself to Death. Luckily, there's help if I lose the will to live. But only if I can find my coupon.

The-Guy got me a (non-point & shoot) camera for my birthday!!!! I've always wanted one!!!!!! I just got it, so I don't know how to use it yet. All I have to show for it so far are 754 pictures of my cats' ears, plus this picture of The-Guy and my step-gal:The Succeed in Life Center continues to amuse me. Keep in mind that this is the same place where you need a coupon to see a pastor. Here's what it had up on its sign this past weekend:If I'm feeling suicidal, I'm thinking I don't want to have to search around for a coupon in order to get help. I mean, what if my coupon is expired?!?

I still have a few more honeymoon pictures. A Taco Shack in Austin: My understanding of the word "shack" is a bit shaky, apparently. They had these spices spices at a drug store type place:
It must be hard to decide between them.

Anyway, nose back to the grindstone. I figured out that in the last six months I've written at least 24 papers at 15-20 pages each. The end is in sight though. Maybe. If not, I'll have to find that coupon.

If I had an interesting title, I would slapped it up on a bulletin board already

Don't you hate it when you're enjoying a blog and then the person suddenly falls off the face of the earth for no apparent reason? Yeah me too. Sorry I haven't been around. But I more or less fell off the face of the Earth for the usual reasons...like school starting.

Still, The-Guy finished the bathroom, so I can do before and after pictures. Remember the "before" picture? Oh! Wait...I didn't get a before picture. But I got a not-too-long-after-before-picture:And now it looks like this:Here's the purple streak my gal got put in her hair in a salon. Good thing I got a picture, because the permanent dye only lasted four days. I guess she wasn't supposed to swim?I've cooked very few dinners in the time leading up to the first day of school. I did manage to explain to that sweet pea o' mine why it would be okay for me to cook a meal that not everyone in the family would gobble with equal enthusiasm:

"Not everyone will hate dinner every night. But someone will hate dinner some nights."

You can't displease all of the people some of the time, after all. Well...if you work really hard I'm sure you can.

Last but not least, I might as well throw in a few more honeymoon pictures. My brand new favorite place on the planet, Luckenbach. Have I mentioned that Luckenbach is just like heaven? Actually, not having been to heaven, I couldn't really say. But in Luckenbach, people sit around and play guitar and sing and it's really quite wonderful.

Still in Luckenbach - there's a chicken in this tree somewhere. I don't know where:Here's a guy cooking sausages, but I forgot the name of the town:
The inside of the dome of the Texas state capital building:I'm sure I'll be coming up for air soon, & then I'll post something that takes me more than 53 seconds to write. And I'll comment on your blog. Or I'll call you. Or I'll email you. Or I'll come down to your classroom and chat. Or I'll comment on your facebook status. If you live in Morocco, I already checked out your facebook status but I just didn't comment. But I will do all that stuff soon!

If it's a crime, then I'm sure it must not have happened

More honeymoon pictures! Here we are touring the Spoetzl Brewery, makers of Shiner beer:
I can't decide whether walking into a county courthouse while construction workers are renovating it is actually a crime that perhaps shouldn't be broadcast over the internet.

If it IS a crime, we definitely didn't do that and I just got these photos elsewhere on the internet without crediting them.

Wait, that might be a crime too...

In any case, here's a random county courthouse they might or might not have been renovating in Texas or some other state that someone may or may not have walked into because the door was unlocked. Isn't it beautiful?


Here are some giant spider pictures The-Guy-Who-Knows-A-Song-About-A-Chicken took. We actually stopped so he could take a picture of these tractors:But oh my gosh! The spiders! The fence was silly with them!

Now I appreciate spiders, really I do. In fact, I'm a big fan of anything that would happily munch on a mosquito or cockroach for lunch.

But The-Guy took these pictures. I got close enough, but never steady enough, and the wind was blowing them all around making it extra hard to get a good shot if you were already shaking.

So that's set number two on the honeymoon pictures! More to come and hopefully some wedding photos soon too!

It hurts me to say this, it hurts a lot, a lot a lot. But Austin is cooler than we are.

We're back from our honeymoon. It was wonderful and Luckenback is as heavenly and romantic as you all imagined. I highly recommend it as a honeymoon destination.

Unfortunately, I've come to the conclusion that Austin is cooler than we are, DESPITE the fact that Houston has the world's largest and oldest art car parade.

Houston got these cows awhile back:You'd just see different ones around town for no reason. But Austin got guitars instead:
Plus, here's public transportation in Houston: Meanwhile, here's Austin's bus: At least we have light rail: Austin even has at least one outdoor shower for homeless people (or joggers). That's got to be way better than bathing in the fountains in Houston, or the ditches outside of Houston.

Plus, Austin has all these bicycle taxis: We just have plain old regular taxis.

But the icing on the cake or maybe the whole cake AND icing is that Austin has more musicians than you can shake a stick at.

I think musicians are sort of like zucchinis in Austin. Except that unlike zucchinis, which you have to unload into some poor sucker's car when you grow too many, Austin has special designated areas just for unloading extra musicians. I'm not really sure why you need a permit to unload a musician, but that's the way it is in the big city.

More honeymoon pictures later. After all, like all good honeymooners we toured a beer factory and we broke into a county courthouse. And I took some more bathroom pictures too. I wouldn't want the world wide web to miss the evidence.

Pictures that aren't mine:
Houston cows
Houston metro
Houston light rail