Good morning, Leslie

Yesterday with amazing determination, and the help from friends, the headliner was finally removed from my Xterra! Removing the cloth was actually the easy part. The foam underneath was the problem. But after several hours and glasses of wine, I finally brushed the last bit of orange foam down. Meanwhile, a motley crew had been forming in the parking lot outside my car. I joined the circle of neighbors for general b.s.ing and eventually a game that was new to me, a word game care of Allen, called Contact. (Wiki explanation so I don't forget!)

By the way, can I just say, I love my apartment complex. There are twenty seven units of people who I like to joke 'have made significant compromises in their life plan.' We are 20-30 somethings who have decided that living in studio apartments is not only still ok, but fairly awesome. Most of us live in our little shoe boxes for the location, we can walk to Barton Springs pool in less than 10 mins, and be on the greenbelt even faster. If nothing else, these and perhaps a few other factors definitely lead to an interesting sampling of Austinites. We joke that this complex needs a reality show, the oddities really never stop, or even slow down. For example, I was just bid good-morning (its 4:00pm) by Leslie, yes, the Leslie - he moved in with my neighbor a few weeks ago. And while yes, it did actually raise an eyebrow, it was not nearly the most interesting thing to happen this month. By the way, today's poison appears to be Jose Cuervo, god bless him ;P

I woke up this morning just wanting to get things done, which is lucky because drizzly Saturday mornings usually deliver the opposite affect. I headed straight to Goodwill to drop off about 8 bags of crap, four four of which had rode out the horrific orange foam fiasco in the back of my car and were now decently coated in the stuff. Sorry Goodwill, I love you!

Then something I've been dreading: sorting through my books. Three piles: coming on the trip (obviously a very small pile,) going to my parents house (larger than I would have liked,) and the final pile were those to be sold to Half-price Books.  I actually made $12.50, which was more than I expected, I kinda thought they might laugh and toss them in their own Goodwill box ;) So I was feeling pretty good about that, and came home with decent but dwindling motivation. Got some stuff down to the car to take to my parents, hoping to drive it over there tomorrow.

That sorta brings us up to speed. I might move a few more things down to the car this evening, also I need to deliver a juicer and some books to my friend on the east side. Tonight I'm grilling with my neighbors behind the complex, its been too long since I've had some good food under this roof! After that I need to get busy on research; my friend Pedro just suggested taking a ferry to Alaska and I'm eager to find out exactly what that entails!