Dale Miller

Sunday dawned (if dawn can even be the correct term) foggy, overcast, and rainy. By the time I left the house it was not raining, but still foggy. The fields at Interstate looked nice, but were a couple of inches deep in mud. I set up the sound system, but not quite as usual. I put garbage bags over the speakers, which actually worked pretty well. The only noticeable effect was a buzzing during loud base notes. I stopped at Wal-Mart on the way in and picked up a 10′x10′ canopy under which to set up the system. That was an excellent move on my part.

Not suprisingly, the Riverwalkers didn’t show for their noon game. I joined with several others to play a pickup game against the Kickball Mafia. Good times were had. Shortly after that, the rain picked up again. By my 2:30 Trippin’ Balls game it was cold and wet. I stayed as a sub in that game, so didn’t get thoroughly wet and muddy at that point. Mid-afternoon the rain quit and eventually the sun even came out. That didn’t really diminish the mud, however. The Fembots game at 6:15 was still quite muddy. Although most players were mud-covered by the end of the day, I remained mostly clean. Carrying a camera is a good defense to being tackled.

The highlight of my day was that I actually got up the courage to ask someone to go to “Movin’ Out” with me. While she didn’t respond with an enthusiastic “yes”, she at least gave me a strong “maybe”. On the strength of that, I now have tickets. Hopefully that will work out.

Oh, and I was able to hose down more scantily-clad women yesterday than any other day so far.

I awoke with a headache this morning, and despite application of BC Powder, napping, and snuggling kitties, it hasn’t gone away. Oddly enough, I have been somewhat productive today anyway. I have straightened the house, done the laundry, picked up the detritus from the roofing job that was missed, and mostly gotten ready to head out for kickball tomorrow. Such an exciting life I lead.

Today was a good day. Since this week was UALR’s spring break, that meant that I got today off (that’s all the break employees are given). I slept in and had pleasant dreams. I received a telephone call mid-morning from the gentleman who came and looked at my roof last week wondering if today would be a good time to work on it. He showed up an hour or so later and quickly and expertly repaired the damage. It feels much better to not have to worry that I’m going to have leaks every time it rains.

This evening I headed up to Hendrix to hear Suzi Parker speak/read, an event sponsored by the Third Wavers: Hendrix’s Feminist Club. I don’t remember where I first saw that this was happening, but I decided it would be fun to go. I haven’t been to one of Suzi’s gatherings since Sex in the South first came out five years ago. Afterwards, I asked a lovely young woman named Laura for a recommendation on local restaurants. She suggested “Something Brewing”, a coffeehouse just down Front Street from the college. I took her advice and tried it. I was happy with the food, and I happened to show up on a night they had live music from a 7-person jazz band. It was altogether an enjoyable experience. I need to get out and do things like that more often.

It seems that “Movin’ Out” will be coming to Little Rock next month. My dance instructor recommended that we should see it if possible, and it sounds like it should be good. The problem for me, of course, is that I don’t want to go by myself, and have no one to take.

Any nice female want to join me for a night out?

When I stay busy, it’s hard to stay depressed. I spent last evening seeing how many web-based IMAP clients I could install for testing purposes. We have a fairly ancient commercial product (that was discontinued years ago) that a small but vocal group of users likes. It needs to be replaced, but there is as yet no consensus as to the particular replacement. Thus the trial. I now have Squirrelmail, RoundCubemail, Imp, NOCC, and V-webmail running on a server for an all-out webmail battle. Today I spent some time patching out test mail server with all the latest from Sun. I’ll probably spend tomorrow trying to figure what this patchset broke.

I’m looking forward to choir tomorrow night. Missing last week made me feel somewhat disconnected.

Yeah, that’s about as interesting as it gets.

I should update LibraryThing more often (and build bookshelves, but that’s another issue). I seem to have slowed down a bit on my reading, going through only 20 books in two+ months. Here is the list since January 12th (P.S. Thanks, Emilie):

Acevedo, Mario X-Rated Bloodsuckers
Chance, Karen Touch the Dark (Cassandra Palmer Series, Book 1)
Clark, Carol Higgins Laced (Regan Reilly Mysteries, No. 10)
Evanovich, Janet Naughty Neighbor
Evanovich, Janet Wife For Hire
Feist, Raymond E. A Darkness at Sethanon: Volume IV in the Riftwar Saga
Feist, Raymond E. Daughter of the Empire
Feist, Raymond E. Krondor the Assassins (The Riftwar Legacy, Book 2)
Feist, Raymond E. Krondor the Betrayal:: Book One of the Riftwar Legacy
Feist, Raymond E. Krondor: Tear of the Gods (The Riftwar Legacy)
Feist, Raymond E. Mistress of the Empire (Empire Trilogy, Bk. 3)
Feist, Raymond E. Prince of the Blood, 15th Anniversary Edition
Feist, Raymond E. Rage of a Demon King (Serpentwar Saga , Vol 3)
Feist, Raymond E. Rise of a Merchant Prince (Serpentwar Saga)
Feist, Raymond E. Servant of the Empire
Feist, Raymond E. Shadow of a Dark Queen (The Serpentwar Saga, Book 1)
Feist, Raymond E. Shards of a Broken Crown (Serpentwar Saga, Book 4)
Feist, Raymond E. The King’s Buccaneer
Sinclair, Linnea The Down Home Zombie Blues
Vaughn, Carrie Kitty and the Silver Bullet (Kitty Norville, Book 4)

I like saving money at the grocery store. Doesn’t everyone? Some people are great about finding, maintaining, and using coupons. I am not one of those people. I get coupons at the cash register, I get them in the mail, I take them off the side of packages, and I rarely remember to actually take them to the grocery store with me.

So, when Kroger sent me an email advertising Shortcut$, a service which would allow me to find coupons and link them to my Kroger card (which I carry on my keyring), it sounded like a wonderful idea. I headed on over to the site to sign up. Now, I should have been leery as soon as I saw the AOL logo, but I headed on in anyway. After a signup process worthy of a credit card account (input information, respond to email, answer a lost password question, then actually log in), I then was able to link my Kroger card via yet another screen asking questions they should be able to determine by querying the card database. Okay, I got everything set up and headed for the coupons — all nine of them. Yes, nine. Of the nine, only one was even for a product I am likely to buy. Not what I was expecting, but I expect too much from people trying to “go electronic”. Many times they just don’t get it. This is one of those times.

So…it’s a good idea, but unless they can snag many more advertisers it’s not worth the effort.

I was complaining about a sore knee a couple of months ago, and was told (in anticipation of my then-upcoming birthday) “when you hit 50, things start falling apart”. It’s true that I can’t do things as easily as I did even five years ago. What I didn’t anticipate was falling apart emotionally. The past couple of weeks have been particularly hard, and I don’t know why. I just find myself becoming depressed and staying that way. This is plus-ungood. It’s time for something to change — probably me.

The title of this post was taken from the book by Chinua Achebe, which I recommend.

I have a long history with Mexico Chiquito. As a child my family rarely ate out unless we were on vacation. When we did, it was a small collection of restaurants. One of those was (the original) Mexico Chiquito in North Little Rock (Rose City, to be exact). The original restaurant had hard-packed dirt floors, unfinished wooden tables that had been wiped down so much the grain was ridged, and candles in the mouths of wine bottles on each table. The meal option originally consisted of a dinner platter.  You also got salad and sherbet for dessert (a cube served in a metal dish on a stem). They later added other choices, but that was the original. I always loved to go there. It was exotic, dark, and had an atmosphere all its own. The food was both good and consistent. We didn’t eat there often, so it wasn’t something to tire of.

Fast-forward a number of years, to the Mexico Chiquito at Rodney Parham and Markham. My date and I enter, and are seated. The manager walks by and knows Angie. He goes off and brings our drinks and talks for a couple of minutes. Then we wait. And wait.  And snag random passing waiters to try to find someone to take our order. And wait. And finish our drinks, and wait. After about twenty minutes of that we got up and walked out. Not the most pleasant dinning experience. I refused to enter a Mexico Chiquito for several years after that.

Fast-forward a few more years, and a new Mexico Chiquito opens on Cantrell road at Candlewood Station (Kroger). I decided to stop in tonight and give it a try. It’s small for a full-service restaurant, and was almost full at 6:00 p.m. I was greeted immediately and seated. My waitress wasn’t immediately asking for my drink order, but she did tell me she’d be right with me as she brought to-go boxes and the bill to the next table. That was already a point in her favor. I ordered the fruit punch. Ah, heaven. As soon as I tasted it I was taken back to the original. That has to be some of the best punch ever. My meal was delivered quickly, and it was good. Maybe not quite as good as when I was a kid, but then maybe the meal was good and I have changed. Who can say? My waitress kept my punch glass filled, and checked back often. My only complaint with the food was there was too much of it. Their dinners are big. That much hasn’t changed. I don’t remember from the menu whether they have sherbet for dessert , but I’ll check next time.

In any case, I now have renewed faith in Mexico Chiquito. It will never be the special-dinner-out-with-family restaurant that it was when I was young, but it’s not a bad place to grab a meal occasionally.

On Monday I didn’t feel the best in the world, but put that down to spending all day Sunday at Hindman park with kickballers. On Tuesday I felt even worse, so that probably wasn’t it. Yesterday I stayed home from work in an attempt to feel better, and it somewhat worked. By last night I was at least fair-to-partly-cloudy. This morning felt much like yesterday morning, so I’m home again. This is particularly bad, since it means I have missed dance class two times this week, and I will be missing choir tonight. That fails to make me happy.

The really bad part of being sick is that I don’t feel like doing anything. That means I end up lying in bed and thinking. That’s rarely a good thing for me, since I tend dto dwell on what’s wrong in my life rather than what’s right. I end up becoming somewhat  depressed, which puts me in a downward spiral.  I’m my own worst enemy.