As has bacon. Unless it’s bacon-scented vagina, in which case, carry on.

So, Q has made it safely to Virginia, and he’s delighted his apartment is close to a Popeye’s Chicken. Everyone should have a taste of home whenever he needs it and Popeye’s Cajun shrimp po-boy should just about do it for Q. He now has had his cable and Internet installed and has no kids to yell at for leaving a mess in the kitchen.

He is also researching the best way to keep his 850 square feet of hardwoods clean. I’m more than a little jealous.

Jon Alex came home a few months ago excited about orientation at his new and upcoming middle school. He’s been trying for years to hop a bus to Los Angeles to win a starring role on a Disney Channel series, so when he signed up for orchestra after orientation—as opposed to theatre arts— I was confused, bemused and a little relieved. His current plan now includes professional viola-ist (?) and working on his best-selling science fiction-realism novel between auditions. I’m very glad I no longer have to live in an east LA roach motel shuttling him to child actor auditions 20 years before his public cardiac arrest from amphetamines, coke and booze. Being a professional violaist (I should really look that up) and part-time writer sounds much more safe.

Anyway, orchestra instrument fitting was today, and I’m in love with Mr D, the teacher/conductor. Thelonious Monk and John Coltrane were there, too, if you can believe it, still collaborating on Epistrophy. The booster club parent who welcomed us was awesomely perky and informative and treated us to bagels and coffee. I may live in the most boring suburban nabe in the southern U.S., but never say we don’t know how to host a music event. It was lovely. I have yet to tell Q we are now committed to some sort of bourgeois rent-to-own viola program at 30 bucks a month.

My tagline rotator has been fixed, thanks to Vasken the developer! So now when you land on the home page, you’ll see my different taglines right beneath free fringes in the title block. I think that tagline rotator plugin is the sole reason why I can’t quit blogging. I love it.

Still gotta give Q a few weeks to work on lightening the text background color, but I think I’ll hold on to this template. I don’t blog everyday and when I do write a post, it’s not that long. I probably should have divided this one into three separate ones: one for Virginia, one for viola, one for bacon-scented vagina and vasectomy, but no tellin’ when I would have gotten around to posting them. I’ll work on the habit of creating Tumblr-like posts and this light text on dark background issue will take care of itself.

Edit: a person who plays the viola is called a violist or a viola player. Now we know.

Your three Vs in comments…

Don’t get used to this template. It’s avant garde and fucking hard to read. But I do like that it treats my family photos and my friend Flood’s photo collection like we’re hanging in the Louvre. Each page (not post) even gets its own background image and that is badass. I’ll add more pages as I go along. For now, you get the about me page I last updated in the Cretaceous period and my music collection.

I wanna keep the theme, but I’ll need Q to take a break from bettering our lives so he can figure out how to change the background color. As I type, he’s sleeping after packing all day, then he’ll hit the road in the early in the morning for his move to the Washington, D.C., area. I would have killed a few puppies to have made the trip with him, but we love puppies, so I’ll have to wait until next month for a visit. This new job came almost out of the blue at a friend’s recommendation, and, wow, that company moved fast. One day, it was a possibility. The next day, he had an offer letter. Background check, apartment leasing office check, and the next thing I knew, I was on the phone with the cable installer selecting Q’s channel lineup.

Some of you know our history and, of those who know, most are aware Q and I haven’t lived together in three years. So, yeah, this is a bummer that he’s leaving Texas for the east coast, but it’s not like we had a shock-to-the-system, whatever-am-I-going-to-do-without-you  going away party. That did happen the first time around and let me tell you: lefty loosey, righty tighty has saved my fixin’ stuff bacon many a day. Anyway, this time around, we spent our last weekend together fixing my dad’s computer and each avoiding getting kicked in the neck as baby Ehren slept between us.  No one had time to cry.

So tonight my biggest issue is getting my tagline rotator to work with this theme. The plugin developer is a very nice guy, and life has moved on for him. I’m not sure if he’s available to address my compatibility issues. My second biggest issue will be to choose a featured image for this post. I’ve gotten so used to grabbing what I need from Flood’s Flickr page for my posts over at yeah write, but I’m thinking since this is my personal blog, I should use my own. Did I tell you I broke my DSLR? Talk about a shock-to-the-system, whatever-am-I-going-to-do-without-you  going away party. I think Q cried himself to sleep.

I’ll figure something out.

Getting reacquainted in comments…

Q,

I thought this would look good on your car or maybe on Ehren’s Big Wheel.

Keep it Real,

one of Q’s crazy friends

I try to be philosophical about them, as in nothing ever being permanent, and those words being lost to a dimension in search of the family-centered rambles of an unemployed writer. Something like that. Anyway, free fringes, in the midst of one of those blog crashes, has been redirected to purple patch, and I’m making myself at home here.

About that unemployed writer thing: these days, I no longer consider myself to be unemployed. I’m more like on hiatus from the workforce. On some sort of unpaid vacation from projects I never really enjoyed in the first place.  My current plans involve finding paid projects that I actually want to work on and winning the lottery. I fully understand my plans are neither unique nor all that probable. But they are possible and that’s all I need.

Q, the kids, Nana and me