happenings
it's the halfway point of the 3-day weekend. I'm drinking trippel. The cat's drinking milk. It has rained a great deal here.
After work yesterday, my coworker megan and I went to a student's soccer game. The student, a young girl, plays varsity at Mayfield High. Our school (Alma) doesn't have sports because we have art, so if you want to play varsity sports you have to go to another school. Artists don't play sports. ? So there we were amongst the parents in the metal bleachers, the organ mountains towering 10 miles behind the field, storm clouds and a rainbow, and I think to myself, "aren't organized sports cool?" Lately I've been into golf and climbing and more individual type sports. For a while I thought it was because my tastes were evolving, but I think it was also because it's hard to get into team sports if you're not in school. It's really kind of a unique experience to play on a team. I think you only really get a good chance when you're young. I played on a men's hockey team in blaine for a few seasons, and that was really fun. But it's also way more of a hassle to work around a full time schedule. So listen kids--play sports on a team.
Later that night I met up with some more coworkers and we got ice cream at cold stone. what a ridiculous place. Do people really care how they get their ingredients combined into their food? I'm going to open a restaurant called the cyclone, and everything will be put together in a wind tunnel! We'll make a killing. Anyway they put an absurd amount of coconut in my smoothie.
After that we went to a "fancy" place called the Double Eagle--the DE (or "dirty E", or "deviled eggs", or the dingy... well, we had a fun time coming up with different titles). This place is in "old" mesilla, which is my favorite part of town. The houses there are very old, spanish colonial adobes, and the thing I really like is that the buildings are spaced on a pedestrian scale as opposed to the automobile scale of the rest of cruces. So the DE is inside a really old adobe mansion with period furnishings. Nice wood bar, expensive drinks, and strange chile concoctions stored in huge glass jars. While we were there a small film crew came in and started bustling about. Strange how a camera completely changes your (my) reality. People do things for the camera. As it turns out, this was a canadian crew working on a food network show called "Glutton for Pain." The star goes around trying painful foods, and he was here in town because there are no hotels in Hatch--a town 40 minutes up the road where they are having a chile harvest festival. Apparently he's entering the chile eating contest, where the winner is the one who eats the most (incredibly hot) peppers in two minutes.
So we drank our fancy margaritas and chatted with the director. Being canadian, these people were all very nice. I asked if we could meet the star and after he was done filming his bit he came over and shook our hands. We wished him luck and told him he was pronouncing jalepeno wrong (he forgot the "en-yay"). As they left they gave us the remnants of their chile platter apetizer, a dizzying array of variously prepared local chiles. The little red ones really got our goats.
When I got home I drank beer, watched Arrested Development dvd's and let the cat climb on my head, a good bachelor night as Mols is at Eric's wedding in International Falls (from one border to the the other, eh?).
Today I drove coworkers Aaron (A-train), Megan, and myself 20 miles up the road to Radium Springs, where a student's house has been flooded. We would not have cared to help save for the fact that this kid is one of the best students in the school (I have him in AP english). Maybe I shouldn't say that. AmeriCorps will help any student in need! But we won't hesitate if we actually like the person.
So there has been kind of an ongoing saga at this house due to the recent rains, wondering and sandbagging, but never actually flooding. Then, early wednesday morning, during a shower that wasn't even particularly violent compared to other recent rains, the student and the family awoke to a knee-deep spring rushing down their living room out the back door. I'm talking 2am freaky shit, surprised no one drowned or conked their head and drowned after slipping on some concrete freaky shit. But no one did. I heard about it in class the next day, but it didn't really register as "lost everything." Today I saw the deal and it was... horrible. They lost everything that was not above 4 feet. The thing about floods that I didn't know is that they carry silt (mud) with them. After the water is gone, the mud is still there. Stinky, mucky, poopy, gloppy mud was covering every square inch of floor space. These people are bee keepers/honey farmers with many buildings on a big chunk of land. The mud mixed with the honey preparing equipment, producing an earthy, swampy, fetid, but also sweet and sugary smell. Very strange and overwhelming.
I kind of got the impression that the whole works would need to be bulldozed, so what's the point of shoveling. But they don't have insurance on anything so the feeling was more of a 'salvage what we can because we've got nothing else.' The dad kind of clopped around picking things up and naming them, muttering under his breath. The son, the student, seemed to be in better spirits if not just in denial. Seriously I could not imagine something like this on the scale of Katrina. We worked all day digging and wheelbarrowing, sorting through remnants of a family and a home. There was one fun/tragic moment after lunch when we took turns sledghammering the flooded TV, VCR, and receiver. The moment provided a good physical outlet and some relieving laughter, but it was also very strange to think that these objects were functioning last week.
Filthy with mud, we piled into the jeep and followed our student/friend to his neighbor's hotel/hot springs. That's right--hot fucking springs, the perfect antidote to shoveling stinky mud all day. This place was out in the middle of I don't know where. We drove down a dirt road called "Frodo Place," passed a bunch of small houses and trailers, drove under a wooden railroad bridge, down an arroyo, and finally arrived at this beautiful two-story adobe compound. Apparently they don't rely on "signage" for their business. My student told me they operate completely on word of mouth.
We arrived in time for a late lunch of beans, rice, avocados, watermelon, and canteloupe, and green chile chicken chili for the carnivores. I kind of got the impression that all these people were ghosts and if I returned on my own the whole place would be a shell. Maybe it was the combined effect of being filthy and lost that produced this idea, but whatever the case, these ghosts were hospitable. They invited us to take a dip in the springs, which was actually a concrete hot tub built into the side of a small rock pile/cliff. The hot water was piped in somehow from underground--I forget the details of what the owner told me. but the important part is that it's hot and under pressure naturally. There was a goat, a rooster, and some peacocks roaming the grounds. Peacocks!
We got a call from Amy, who is the english teacher that I work with during 4th period. She was offering dinner on account of the student not having a kitchen, so we made our way back to Cruces to wash up and rest before the date. I made a beer run (for the adults!) on the way home, and I chatted with the cashier while I made my selection. Apparently he also lost his home in the flood--only he lost his a couple weeks ago and he was insured. He had just been fired from his other job as a bouncer at a Cruces club called, seriously, Graham Central Station. I've never been there, but I'm trying to imagine a night club with a dessert theme. He was fired for excessive force on a customer. Apparently the customer was putting himself in a situation where he needed to be "bounced," but he was way bigger than my cashier friend. In threat of "getting dropped," the cashier/bouncer decided he had to break a beer bottle over the guy's head.
"I've never been dropped and I was damned if that was going to be the first time. Dude I just smashed that fucking bottle right over his dome. Knocked him out cold. So now I'm working more shifts here at the liquor store," says the cashier, me nodding neutrally.
I ask him what's with the aquarium behind him and he says, "that's my pet scorpion. I've been taking anti-venom injections all week, which are actually just venom injections. It's been making me sick as hell. I think that's why I lost that fight. But if I complete the course of anti-venom, then his bite won't make me die. It'll swell up good and hurt like hell, but it won't be fatal dude." I'm wondering why he needs to be preparing for the scorpion's bite. He opens the cage and grabs this 5 inch-long monster right by the deathly stinger tail and sets him down on his tattooed forearm.
"Check this out dude," he says as he grabs a black light from under the register. The black light ignites the scorpion's entire body in a blazing magenta.
"His poison is UV sensitive," the cashier says, with the poison-covered scorpion perched inches away from my face.
Dinner was a nice creamy pasta and fruity salad, with guac and chips for an appetizer. The people over drinking age drank wine and the students drank red bull. We played records and talked for a long time. It was fun and kind of strange to be hanging out with students while I was getting half crocked and starting to get jokey. I'd been shoveling shit and sweating with these two students all day so I was less concerned with the codes of professional conduct. anyway they don't fire americorps.
After work yesterday, my coworker megan and I went to a student's soccer game. The student, a young girl, plays varsity at Mayfield High. Our school (Alma) doesn't have sports because we have art, so if you want to play varsity sports you have to go to another school. Artists don't play sports. ? So there we were amongst the parents in the metal bleachers, the organ mountains towering 10 miles behind the field, storm clouds and a rainbow, and I think to myself, "aren't organized sports cool?" Lately I've been into golf and climbing and more individual type sports. For a while I thought it was because my tastes were evolving, but I think it was also because it's hard to get into team sports if you're not in school. It's really kind of a unique experience to play on a team. I think you only really get a good chance when you're young. I played on a men's hockey team in blaine for a few seasons, and that was really fun. But it's also way more of a hassle to work around a full time schedule. So listen kids--play sports on a team.
Later that night I met up with some more coworkers and we got ice cream at cold stone. what a ridiculous place. Do people really care how they get their ingredients combined into their food? I'm going to open a restaurant called the cyclone, and everything will be put together in a wind tunnel! We'll make a killing. Anyway they put an absurd amount of coconut in my smoothie.
After that we went to a "fancy" place called the Double Eagle--the DE (or "dirty E", or "deviled eggs", or the dingy... well, we had a fun time coming up with different titles). This place is in "old" mesilla, which is my favorite part of town. The houses there are very old, spanish colonial adobes, and the thing I really like is that the buildings are spaced on a pedestrian scale as opposed to the automobile scale of the rest of cruces. So the DE is inside a really old adobe mansion with period furnishings. Nice wood bar, expensive drinks, and strange chile concoctions stored in huge glass jars. While we were there a small film crew came in and started bustling about. Strange how a camera completely changes your (my) reality. People do things for the camera. As it turns out, this was a canadian crew working on a food network show called "Glutton for Pain." The star goes around trying painful foods, and he was here in town because there are no hotels in Hatch--a town 40 minutes up the road where they are having a chile harvest festival. Apparently he's entering the chile eating contest, where the winner is the one who eats the most (incredibly hot) peppers in two minutes.
So we drank our fancy margaritas and chatted with the director. Being canadian, these people were all very nice. I asked if we could meet the star and after he was done filming his bit he came over and shook our hands. We wished him luck and told him he was pronouncing jalepeno wrong (he forgot the "en-yay"). As they left they gave us the remnants of their chile platter apetizer, a dizzying array of variously prepared local chiles. The little red ones really got our goats.
When I got home I drank beer, watched Arrested Development dvd's and let the cat climb on my head, a good bachelor night as Mols is at Eric's wedding in International Falls (from one border to the the other, eh?).
Today I drove coworkers Aaron (A-train), Megan, and myself 20 miles up the road to Radium Springs, where a student's house has been flooded. We would not have cared to help save for the fact that this kid is one of the best students in the school (I have him in AP english). Maybe I shouldn't say that. AmeriCorps will help any student in need! But we won't hesitate if we actually like the person.
So there has been kind of an ongoing saga at this house due to the recent rains, wondering and sandbagging, but never actually flooding. Then, early wednesday morning, during a shower that wasn't even particularly violent compared to other recent rains, the student and the family awoke to a knee-deep spring rushing down their living room out the back door. I'm talking 2am freaky shit, surprised no one drowned or conked their head and drowned after slipping on some concrete freaky shit. But no one did. I heard about it in class the next day, but it didn't really register as "lost everything." Today I saw the deal and it was... horrible. They lost everything that was not above 4 feet. The thing about floods that I didn't know is that they carry silt (mud) with them. After the water is gone, the mud is still there. Stinky, mucky, poopy, gloppy mud was covering every square inch of floor space. These people are bee keepers/honey farmers with many buildings on a big chunk of land. The mud mixed with the honey preparing equipment, producing an earthy, swampy, fetid, but also sweet and sugary smell. Very strange and overwhelming.
I kind of got the impression that the whole works would need to be bulldozed, so what's the point of shoveling. But they don't have insurance on anything so the feeling was more of a 'salvage what we can because we've got nothing else.' The dad kind of clopped around picking things up and naming them, muttering under his breath. The son, the student, seemed to be in better spirits if not just in denial. Seriously I could not imagine something like this on the scale of Katrina. We worked all day digging and wheelbarrowing, sorting through remnants of a family and a home. There was one fun/tragic moment after lunch when we took turns sledghammering the flooded TV, VCR, and receiver. The moment provided a good physical outlet and some relieving laughter, but it was also very strange to think that these objects were functioning last week.
Filthy with mud, we piled into the jeep and followed our student/friend to his neighbor's hotel/hot springs. That's right--hot fucking springs, the perfect antidote to shoveling stinky mud all day. This place was out in the middle of I don't know where. We drove down a dirt road called "Frodo Place," passed a bunch of small houses and trailers, drove under a wooden railroad bridge, down an arroyo, and finally arrived at this beautiful two-story adobe compound. Apparently they don't rely on "signage" for their business. My student told me they operate completely on word of mouth.
We arrived in time for a late lunch of beans, rice, avocados, watermelon, and canteloupe, and green chile chicken chili for the carnivores. I kind of got the impression that all these people were ghosts and if I returned on my own the whole place would be a shell. Maybe it was the combined effect of being filthy and lost that produced this idea, but whatever the case, these ghosts were hospitable. They invited us to take a dip in the springs, which was actually a concrete hot tub built into the side of a small rock pile/cliff. The hot water was piped in somehow from underground--I forget the details of what the owner told me. but the important part is that it's hot and under pressure naturally. There was a goat, a rooster, and some peacocks roaming the grounds. Peacocks!
We got a call from Amy, who is the english teacher that I work with during 4th period. She was offering dinner on account of the student not having a kitchen, so we made our way back to Cruces to wash up and rest before the date. I made a beer run (for the adults!) on the way home, and I chatted with the cashier while I made my selection. Apparently he also lost his home in the flood--only he lost his a couple weeks ago and he was insured. He had just been fired from his other job as a bouncer at a Cruces club called, seriously, Graham Central Station. I've never been there, but I'm trying to imagine a night club with a dessert theme. He was fired for excessive force on a customer. Apparently the customer was putting himself in a situation where he needed to be "bounced," but he was way bigger than my cashier friend. In threat of "getting dropped," the cashier/bouncer decided he had to break a beer bottle over the guy's head.
"I've never been dropped and I was damned if that was going to be the first time. Dude I just smashed that fucking bottle right over his dome. Knocked him out cold. So now I'm working more shifts here at the liquor store," says the cashier, me nodding neutrally.
I ask him what's with the aquarium behind him and he says, "that's my pet scorpion. I've been taking anti-venom injections all week, which are actually just venom injections. It's been making me sick as hell. I think that's why I lost that fight. But if I complete the course of anti-venom, then his bite won't make me die. It'll swell up good and hurt like hell, but it won't be fatal dude." I'm wondering why he needs to be preparing for the scorpion's bite. He opens the cage and grabs this 5 inch-long monster right by the deathly stinger tail and sets him down on his tattooed forearm.
"Check this out dude," he says as he grabs a black light from under the register. The black light ignites the scorpion's entire body in a blazing magenta.
"His poison is UV sensitive," the cashier says, with the poison-covered scorpion perched inches away from my face.
Dinner was a nice creamy pasta and fruity salad, with guac and chips for an appetizer. The people over drinking age drank wine and the students drank red bull. We played records and talked for a long time. It was fun and kind of strange to be hanging out with students while I was getting half crocked and starting to get jokey. I'd been shoveling shit and sweating with these two students all day so I was less concerned with the codes of professional conduct. anyway they don't fire americorps.
posted by j0eb0t-xj9 at 5:34 PM
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