Day Trip to South Dallas

Georgetown is a cute little city, but it closes on Sundays. Go on Saturday instead.

Closed or not, I had a good time today with Robbie, who took me for a bit of sight-seeing, and indulged me with a spot of shopping at Payless, where I picked up a cute, yet sensible pair of ballet flats. We also visited the big-box mega pet store so we could buy something his wiener could play with.

I never really noticed before how closely dog toys can resemble, um, other kinds of toys. Bill, I asked Robbie to take this picture for you - maybe it's not the one you were looking for, but it really might as well be.


I liked the old Williamson County jail, now in service as a public health building, and looking pretty much the way a place you take your children for free vaccinations should look - at least from the kids' point of view:


We tried to go for iced coffee, but every place that wasn't Starbucks was closed. So we went back to Robbie's and drank ice water and watched a movie on cable instead.

But at least Robbie's wiener was happy.

Urban Exploration, Part Whatever

The spectacularly breathtaking Niagara Mohawk Power Corp. building in downtown Syracuse.

Why yes, that is 100% chrome trim!

Last time I was in town we didn't visit downtown Syracuse, and I was only vaguely aware that there was such a place. But there is, and it's really pretty amazing.

Austin has some really cool historic downtown buildings from the late nineteenth century, but none of them are very big. Syracuse was a fairly major port along the Erie Canal and so its older downtown buildings are quite large, including several turn-of-the-century skyscrapers. Sadly, the Oswego Canal came to bypass the city in the early 1900s; and while you'd think the original location of the Erie Canal would simply have been redesignated as a business route,* it was actually filled in and is now Erie Blvd.

The weighlock, a tollbooth by the side of the canal where boats were weighed and taxed based on the amount of cargo they were carrying, now serves as a museum, so my dad and I went there today. Then we wandered around downtown for a while.

Here are some pictures!

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*hellllp meeeeeeeeee

A Better Place

Robbie and I visited the third floor of our building today. I never have, but he's been there several times before; there's a special, "secret" restroom, whose mysteries were revealed to him by 3 Martini Break Group alumni Justin and Tony. Nobody else on our floor, the second floor, the "middle" floor, seems to be familiar with it.

Come to think of it, apparently nobody on the third floor is either, which is what gives the place its special allure. It's a haven of peace and tranquility for your most secret activities, boys!

I stayed outside, myself.

I was sorry there were no fountains, trees, flowers, or chirping birds up there. The overhead light fixtures did contain a fairly alarming concentration of dead crickets, but I think that's just because the cleaning staff haven't yet been tipped off to the third floor's existence.

Moreover, I think it was pretty natural to assume that the third floor would be entirely populated by tuxedo- and evening-gown-clad socialites wearing top hats and monocles and opera-length gloves. Yet the whole time I was up there, I saw one guy in business casual and a couple of women in jeans. However, I did see a nondescript door labeled "Authorized Personnel Only - Roof Access," which was locked. Oh, as if that weren't a complete giveaway! Obviously, the hoi polloi are all up there making witty banter over Dom Perignon in the roof garden. You know there's not a one of them wearing white shoes after Labor Day, either.

So anyway, that was one great adventure for the day. For the second, I made an attempt - which I know will particularly please Billy, and Justin, and Sara - to recruit a break group member from the new hires in Mapping. I'd seen these guys around for a while. Today I bumped into one in the kitchen, so I introduced myself, and breathlessly explained that, even though his work group and my work group are sworn enemies, we secretly go on break together twice a day at 9:45 and 2:45 down at the picnic tables, so it was really important that he and his fellow new hires come down sometime.

He seemed unconvinced, possibly even a little alarmed. So, just to clarify things, when I got back to my desk I emailed him the 3 Martini Break Group Official Application Form.

Amazingly, there was no response from him by the end of the day. Who would dare turn down an invitation to join the 3 Martini Break Group?! Inconceivable!! I was slightly piqued. So I considered following up by firing him with Tony's WTF citation form, but it occurred to me that (1) having no idea who I was, he might come to think I was really just indescribably weird, and (2) since he hadn't mentioned his last name when he introduced himself, it was possible I was sending these emails to some random stranger, in which case firing the guy would hardly improve matters.

I need to be more careful at work. If I go around terrifying the new hires and issuing threats to complete strangers, I'll never get invited to the cool party on the roof garden.

The "Third Floor"

I work on the second floor of my building, but there is in fact a third floor.

You look shocked. But it's true! There really is!

The elevators in the middle of the building, and the stairwell on the east side, go up to 3. The other stairwells and the other elevator do not. I don't know anyone who works on this so-called "third floor," if that is indeed its real name.

It's not, perhaps, a complete mystery, in that the third floor is where Robbie once encountered (while hidden, trembling with suppressed hilarity, in a bathroom stall) the "Menomena" urinal whistler who was able to break wind in perfect time*; though I have to admit, this probably raises more questions than it answers. (Such as, "Is that really how you're supposed to spell Menomena?" YouTube users seem to be in some disagreement regarding this issue.)

Rarely you see someone coming down from the third floor. They seem normal enough, which right there puts them several rungs higher on the evolutionary ladder than many of the people who work on my floor. But what's up there? What can it possibly be like??

It's ridiculous that I've worked in this building for over a year and a half and have no idea. I think it's time to do some corporate exploration. Unfortunately Robbie is currently off studying local bathroom behavior in the uncharted wilds of Florida, so I'll probably have to go on my own.

I hope the natives are friendly.

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*To this day I have my suspicions.

Best Weekend Ever

Isn't there a song about how, if you're going to Corpus Christi, be sure to have flowers on your car?

I'll write one, perhaps. We're also going to write a musical about the big creepy Jesus of the Sea. Justin, I mean Edwin, has the title song mostly done.

Downtown Corpus, you know, is largely derelict, though there are some efforts under way to revitalize it. There's this incredibly cool old building right across from our hotel. Aside from a lone dive bar on the ground floor, it's been empty for I-don't-know-how-long. Now they're gutting it and turning it into lofts; and I bet they won't go for as much as the downtown lofts in Austin do... Anyway, the doors are all locked and all that's left of the bar is its sign on the side of the building. But many of the windows are open. And there's a fire escape. Wouldn't it be so cool, Edwin and Dumas and I kept saying to one another all weekend, if we could somehow get into that building and explore?

Last night we went out with my old war buddies Omar and Spam Master G, who's still at the hell place (and says it's almost sane now that Tiffany is gone - I cannot tell you how flabbergasted I still am by that - my head is reeling!). And as we walked back through the deserted downtown streets at 2am (almost no bars are open on Sunday night, Memorial Day weekend be damned), we passed our building. It's so cool, isn't it? Wouldn't it be awesome if there were a way in?

You can jump and reach the fire escape, but it's chained in the up position. But Omar gave G a boost (in a fashion that, if they still worked together, would have them both working from home for at least six months) and G went through a window, came down the stairs, and opened the bar door for us. It wasn't really even locked - it opens inward, and was secured by a length of 2x4 propped under the door handle.

There's electricity, but above the fifth floor no lights were on. The inside is completely gutted. Most of the windows were open, so with no interior walls (but many, many concrete columns) it wasn't impenetrably dark. It smelled old. It was deliciously spooky. I half expected Richard Dean Anderson to leap out of the wall at me naked.

Of course we disturbed nothing - there was nothing to disturb, and after a while we made our way back down to street level and outside. It was incredibly cool. I'd like to say it's the crowning moment of the trip, but it's got some pretty stiff competition: the beach at midnight, silent except for the waves and dark except for the stars and a half moon; getting ready in the bathroom for an evening our partying and coming out to find Dumas filling the room with pink balloons and paper streamers and a birthday card and candles for me (he wanted to have a cake too, but since we took my car and nobody else is able to drive it, there wasn't really a way to do that); trying to reassure a very drunk guy on the street corner that we weren't breaking into my car, as it's actually my car; discovering that Captain Albatross looked just like our dad; getting caught staring out our hotel window at all the human drama taking place by the pool; finding out that Robin quit her job at the old hell place by screaming "FAT BITCH!" at Tiffany and slamming the door in her face; breakfast at City Diner with Omar and Robert; talking up Alaska and how much we miss our butler (or maid) Nyuk-Nyuk over lunch in Nixon; listening to cool tunes on Edwin's iPod; having the most complicated, difficult, and lengthy hotel check-in process I have ever experienced; gathering flowers and vegetation at every place we stopped and tucking it under my rear window wiper, so by this point it looks like I drove down a ravine and into the sea ass-backwards; pink yogurty yummy strawberry martinis; taking a driving tour of the ghetto; getting rained on; getting sunned on; laughing and laughing and laughing and laughing and laughing and laughing so much I'm totally hoarse.

Of course, our Dad's ashes are still going round and round on the conveyor belt at the Seattle airport. We thought about asking Nyuk-Nyuk if she (or he) would FedEx them to us, but figured we'd be back home in Barrow by the time they arrived.

So we'll go back again one day. And there will be flowers on my car.