Oct/Nov 2003

the rain'za comin'

2003 Oct 10

Who knew? About the time we hit Mississippi, it came down in buckets. Driving on 61, you couldn't see 10 ft in front of you. The windshield wipers put up a feeble protest against the deluge. Thus it took forever to get to Helena, Ark...

Pretty muddy when we arrived, and it was still raining a bit, so we looked for kiah and haley, and spent most of the evening holed up under a canopy trying to stay dry, and crawled in the van real early, grateful to have a dry secure place to sleep. Maybe tomorrow would be better.

Friday at King Biscuit

2003 Oct 11

friday went a little bit better on the weather front. Tent City dried out a bit by mid morning. I got up and took a walk around town before breakfast, then wandered back to camp and made some tea. It wasn't until one before I made it back up to the levee, and started the day out with Sam Carr. walked around a bit more, and spent some time around camp, then it was time for Pinetop Perkins. They had this young kid from Alabama play a few numbers before pinetop came on, and he was amazing. After that, we went over to Central BBQ to kick it with Kurt, then went back to camp to eat dinner and sit around the fire for the rest of the evening.

Saturday's fare

2003 Oct 12

Everyone looked a bit rough the next morning. I started the morning off by rounding up all the stuff laying around that was fixin' to get rained on, and put up tarps. Yep, more rain, kids. It didn't last too long though, thank goodness. then the sun came out and it was blazing hot. laid low for awhile, then went over to this soul food restaurant that i knew about from before. unfortunately there were tons of people in there and we had to wait forever. killed the time by watching the auburn/arkansas football game so I ended up missing the Jelly Roll Allstars. After rollin' out of there, we watched Robert Lockwood Jr, then went back to the camp and kicked it over there. I wanted to see Charlie Musselwhite but my feet were so sore and blistered that I couldn't muster walking back up over the Levee and back again...sigh. I could sorta hear them from where I was but not real good...

I still ended up having a good night though...a damn good night. The mayor drifted on over a bit later, and we got to talking about Okinawa, VFP, and other stuff. Turns out he's from the Antioch area, which is where the kids come from that crash out in our house for a week or two every summer...then we proceeded directly to get toasted for the rest of the evening.

i love monday...not

2003 Oct 13

what a weird day for me. first i wake up from some bad dreams, and end up pissing off a good friend. it's a dilemma because in our minds we're both right, but i don't know how to reconcile these two opposite views on the same subject. then i go to work and nobody's there...not sure why i got up, but i guess it had to be done regardless.

then i go back home and there's nothing to eat, so tim and i walk over to the medmart to get falafel, but there's this guy in there (who thinks i should marry him and cook him mediterranian food--yeah right, my services are worth money yo) and he's heckling me about eating falafel there all the time. well shit, who in their right mind wouldn't? it's right by my house, all i gotta do is walk one block around the corner and as long as I've got $3 I'm good to go. Aimer and the guys at Mojo's charge at least $5 for the same community service...you do the math.

Then it was time for Mansoor's parent/teacher conference so i rode my bike back to midtown promptly getting caught by the train. these dumb kids kept fooling around by it like they were gonna hop on it while it was moving. oh sure. like they're even tall enough to reach the side latter. i just gave them momma looks like no you don't even go there.

I was late, but so was everyone else. We got to the school and we were supposed to have an appointment. Luckily there was nobody scheduled right then so we were still able to just go down there and talk to his teacher. Basically it didn't sound like there was too much in the way of major issues. The only major thing that came up was finding a way to keep Mansoor from being exposed to a lot of Haram foods like pork at school...southerners and their pork. Looking at the school menu, there's an awful lot of stuff he can't eat. I'm gonna probably have to sit down with the cafeteria manager and have an educational session. There aren't too many people around here who know anything about muslims, so this oughta be interesting. I think what we're gonna do is make a little badge that has a picture of a pig and a cow X'ed out.

going to work, i found all my shit out of order. i hate it when people fuck with my shit. i had to spend an hour cleaning up after fombe's son who had been washing? the dishes and left a huge mess and plenty of unwashed dishes. then i had to find all the stuff that had been moved. it was forever before i could even start...fucking shit.

adventures in the suburban nightmare

2003 Oct 24

things haven't been going so well lately. you might say that morale is not high over in alpha company. after the latest string of misfortunes and setbacks i've been keeping one eye behind me so to speak. you never know what might come for you in the night.

so with all that in mind, i've really been looking forward to chinese classes...to get my mind off of what's been going on around me lately.

it's no simple thing though to get to chinese class. i have no car at the moment, so i have to take the bus all the way to the other side of town and beyond it--because actually it's way out in germantown. a no-man's land if ever there was. and honestly i don't exactly know my way around out there.

i vaguely remembered something about riverdale, so that's where i got off...after nearly being run over (it's rather highway like on that end of poplar, and lucky me, i get to cross it in the dark), i started walking north, but realized after a while that i had the wrong road. i was too far west of where i needed to be. hopefully i wouldn't be more than a half a mile off...

it was pretty dark out there walking along riverdale road. there were houses all along the way, but it was sooo quiet. plenty of people at home, but it's awfully strange for there to be nobody out sitting on their porches, no kids running around in the street, nobody walking to the liquor store, nobody at all...but me walkin' my butt down the quiet street. everybody's home in their coffins watching tv and baby it's more quiet than a cemetery out here.

i walked for about half an hour, and just about the point where i lost hope, i saw the school and rolled in about 10 minutes late.

Afterwards i was halfway down the road to the bus stop when a guy in a big ass truck pulled over. i figured it was someone from germantown who was curious about the fact that i was walking alone in the dark, but it turns out it was just a guy from class and he hooked me up with a ride most of the way back home, so I didn't have to ride the bus back. sweet!

wow we're reeetards

2003 Nov 11

after telling everyone in town that Allison Williams was coming to play a show at our house TODAY, we find out, it's really tomorrow...doh.

Naturally, everyone works nights on Wednesday. Fortunately Njeri kinda saved our butts by letting us do the show at her restaurant.

Right now I feel like a class A dork, (don't you just love that sly reference to chimney terminology, oh wait, nobody on earth knows or cares what a class A chimney is..)

Other than that, today was pretty cool. for starters, it's not cold out...rather it's in the 70's...unheard of. Andrea has some friend visiting from Finland. The poor guy has to be confused as hell being in a place that's this warm in November. Class went well..actually it was rather lively since we got to talk about GWB, Lap Dances, and the Vietnam War. In between all that, I think we actually did some reading, and grammar too. =) D-- even read something out of the newspaper, which is awesome because he seems kind of shy, and hasn't been very confident about reading out loud in front of the whole class. Not that I can blame him, but I hope he'll keep it up in the future. I had my second session private tutoring session working with D- and she seems like she is benefitting from the extra work outside of class.

It was a pretty nice day so I rode my bike all the way from Evergreen to Ellsworth, meeting up with Casey and Jessica.

Having messed up this whole show thing, I think I'll just lay low for the rest of the evening...

I'll have a cold one

2003 Nov 23

Wow, after fooling around with some 70 degree weather for weeks, it's actually decided to be cold here. Even for Memphis, it's unheard of to have had such warm weather in the month of november.

don't get me wrong. i hear some people like this sort of thing, but i'm not really into having to wear two pairs of pants and 6 layers just to go outside and do stuff. and until we get the woodstove installed there's no heat inside either. sounds fun eh? i've never been big on cold weather anyway. i'm especially not big on it getting dark so early. erg.

enough whining about winter. i'm sure some of you are laughing at me, and in fact would tell me, if you only could, how much you look forward to snow/ice etc. sigh. heathens.

it's been a couple of weeks since i stuck my head in here. truthfully not much has happened...except a pesky string of thefts and breakins that is. fortunately nothing of mine was stolen this time, but you never know, there's still tomorrow. i think it's some neighborhood crackheads who are behind this because the stuff that's disappearing into the night is all the kinda stuff crackheads tend to steal.

sure is quiet around here lately. matt's moving to the warehouse, renae is also moving out, and so's shawn. denny too, at some point. that just leaves me, casey (who's not around much either), tim and jessica. i think personal drama has a lot to do with it. i don't think people really are communicating much at this point.

for me, personally not much has changed. poverty keeps on grinding. little things make me forget it. chinese is still a hard ass language. gossip can always be found at the library. and some things are worth waking up for.

i'm gonna go put on some more shirts now. winter's cold, yo.

til' the next time.

shorty

2003 Nov 24

shawn'z vehicular finally turned up in impound. i was starting to wonder what would happen if it didn't. usually doesn't take long. it's gonna be hard to retrieve lacking sufficient financial resources. i know the feeling...

after raining buckets last night, it's clear and sunny--and cold as shit. i'm not too thrilled. it's life i guess.

time to see what will happen at the employee meeting. heh heh.