on The Dentist's Chair

I'm not very scared of the dentist. In fact my mother used to tell me I was "sick" because I "liked" going to the dentist. It wasn't that I LIKED going to the dentist, it was just that I liked the way I felt when it was all over. Like my mouth and I, together, accomplished a great feat of impossible daring. Such was the dentist... when I was 15.

Now my dentist visits consist of blood and guts. No, really. I got my implant -yay- back in May and ever since then it seems like I'm going to be bleeding when I leave a visit. Such was the result of my visit today, clearing my dear implant of any foreign objects that might cross its path.



But! NONE of this is the point. I'm writing today about the peculiarity of the dentist's chair. What an awkward place to be! I'm laying there half-stoned clutching desperately onto a shirt-tail or my own thumbs or the inside of my pocket. It squeaks--no matter what, even if I just flex a butt cheek, it squeaks. And looming to my left, power drills the size of Montana are about to bore their ways through my gums, and saws with teeth sharper than the sharpest shark (what?) are ready to wipe away the remainder of my pitiful teeths.

Normally, when the tools are silenced and the suction has suctioned out all the blood and guts it can find, I'm left with the sound of the second hand on the drug-company-sponsored clock hanging over my head. Tick, tick, tick: Jeanna, you're one second closer to your imminent mouth-altering demise.

Today, however, my dentist was WAY COOL. We were the only team left in the room, and she put on some alt-rock Pandora pretty loud. We were jamming to The Fray and Rob Thomas and Kelly Clarkson and... and. Oh. SHIT. Jimmy Eat m-f-ing World.

Yes, that's right: A Praise Chorus started blaring through her laptop's speakers and I was stuck with a drill in my mouth and a finger up my nose (or so it felt). A Praise Chorus! Of all of the songs in the world, WHY THIS ONE?! Cabral joked with me that perhaps at some point in my life I was hypnotized to COMPULSIVELY DANCE LIKE A MANIAC any time I heard this song... a hypothesis that doesn't seem quite off. My feet, they start moving. My arms, they do some throwback-monkey-white-girl dance. My ass shakes and... and my head... my head bobs... MUST. NOT. BOB. HEAD. Large drill inside mouth. Must not move... Can't... Must fight... the dancing... FEELING......

And just when I thought I couldn't take it anymore, Jimmy Eat World wanted to fall in love tonight for the last time. For three and a half grueling minutes, my need for dancing had taken over every non-numb part of my body. And now it was over.

Thank God, right?

WRONG. Because what happened next was even more excruciating than I could have ever predicted.

Yes, that's right: VINDICATED started blaring through her laptop's speakers, and I was stuck with no earplugs and no drill and no saw and no talking and not even a second hand to block it out. WHY?! THIS?! ONE?!

There I was. Stuck in the dentist's chair. The dentist asked me how I was doing. How could I tell her that the most horrifying song in on the planet had just come on her Pandora and she needed to push the Thumbs Down ASAP? I could barely even garble out a "mhhbbgggsrrhh" through the muck and mire before she turned on the drill again, not loud enough to dull the pain of Dashboard Confessional penetrating my ears.

Stuck in the dentist's chair. Sounds like a good review of a horrible, horrible song.

on Comic Sans

Today, I put Comic Sans in my mouth, for the pure pleasure of being able to purge it out.



That's right, Comic Sans: DREAM BIG. Your dreams are futile while swimming around in my stomach acids, and will be crushed by the time they enter my intestinal tract. You will leave this world the same way in which you came: crappy!

on Contraptions

I've been having a problem with this stray cat. See, stray cat knows that Otto inhabits the insides of my dwelling place, and stray cat likes to hop up onto my patio fence and lounge around inside my patio, taunting poor Otto with his menacing looks and large, erm, paws. He struts back and forth and Otto MEWS with all his might, hoping that I'll wake up and let him outside to meet his new friend.

Poor Otto doesn't know that new friend would probably kill him with one little slap (Otto's kinda wimpy). Unfortunately, this does not stop stray cat from prancing around, laughing to himself that Otto cannot come out and play.

Well...
NOT ANYMORE.

Last night, I engineered what I am calling The Ultimate Catraption: the cat trap contraption rivaled only by real chicken wire and foxes across the nation.


(Click for larger, more in-depth and completely precise view)

Here's the idea: the fishing line is pretty much invisible, shocking the cat when he tries to jump on the fence and sending him into a state of frenetic fury. He then goes and tells his other cat friends not to mess with that patio in building 6, and the cat party stops right there.

And last night, IT WORKED! There was no mangy stray cat gracing my patio with his seemingly phantom presence, and Otto and I got a solid night's sleep. As an added bonus, I was able to sleep with the glass door open and have a cool, 50-degree breeze billow through the screen.

Let's just hope it holds out through the rest of this awesome weather.

on Pie

Best. Photo. Sequence. EVER: St. Mary's Pie a Chi Phi

on Dumpster Diving

There comes a time in everyone's life--I'm pretty sure--that, when driving by a dumpster, they think to themselves: "I just have to have that _______."

Today, that ______ for me was a beautiful, turquoise-stained wooden pallet. I've been craving a pallet for quite a while now, and it just so happened that the perfect pallet was waiting for me on top of the dumpster at the Toys-R-Us at Blanco and 410. There was no question in my mind: I had to have that pallet.



After climbing on top of my car (sorry, car), lifting the pallet out of the dumpster, almost dropping it and falling off the car instead (with the pallet landing on top of me, of course), I managed to scoot it over to my back seat. This thing has to weigh at least 50 pounds, but there is no way I'm leaving it here... I've gotten this far.

Lucky for me, a nice guy pulled over to help me load it up, and the awesome manager at my apartment complex helped me get it out of the car and into the house.

So, now I have a pallet. A perfect, beautiful, heavy-as-hell pallet ...that I have NO idea what I'm going to do with.







Just look at it! Look at the details, the colors, the little dents and etchings...
this is going to be a project of epic proportions!

on Weekends

It's been a while since I had a "Weekend," but in the past couple of weekends, I've had some amazing ones.

Three weekends ago, I took a semi-spontaneous trip to Chicago. Train rides, day drunk, Michigan Avenue, art school, Chinatown, downtown, and about 40 miles of walking later, I realized what'd I'd been missing out on: genuine, non-stop fun. Then again, it was one of my first real "Weekend"s since college, and I suppose I'd just been missing it more than I realized.

But this past weekend was no match for that Illinois city... who knew that so much else could happen right here at home. On Friday I got stuck in a flood, had someone run into my car in a parking lot, dressed in a Dirndl, chugged beer with the German club, bought shots for some European guys in a sketchy smokey bar, built an amazing art project, drove three hours through a hurricane, took Julie out for her 21st birthday in Houston, got pulled over and sobriety-tested while wearing boxers and a hoodie, lost my ID, found my ID, went to Buc-ees!!!, got home at 4 in the morning, went to church, cooked homemade biscuits, and got 1/4 through building a website.

Next weekend is La Grange and maybe Mexico; two weekends after that it's back to Chicago again. All with 6 bucks in my bank account and two massive blisters on my heels.

David was right. It's a pretty exhilarating feeling, to start conquering the world again.

on Projects

It had been a while since I worked on a project. A REAL project. Not just putting new wall hangers on the back of old pictures or buying organization at Target to try to make myself seem tidier.

Then, a gangsta-ass artist (ok not really) dropped a set of truly amazing paintings in my lap, and I felt inspired:



I thought to myself, I can't let this kid go to Chicago without making him something in return. Hours of sweating over a hot iron (no joke) I finally came up with this: a photograph printed on multiple pieces of fabric, sewn together with thick thread and stretched over a frame.










It feels good to do projects again.