as we may blog

Apologies for the absence. My sister was in town last weekend and as a result I’ll be in detox for, oh, the rest of my life. Which should be about five years shorter now, thanks Kate. The good news is that I now know Cricket Taylor has stickers and plays Wednesdays at Elbow Room, the greatest Elbow Room outside of Ypsilanti.

We went out to the new IKEA in Frisco yesterday–neither of us had been to one and we both enjoy cheap furniture. Big mistake. I was trying to capture a funny angle to the whole situation as we shuffled through the rain in a 20 minute line to get in, shuffled through packed showroom after packed showroom, shuffled through sweaty Texans and some guy writing "turn on the AC" on a chalkboard and people spending thousands of dollars they didn’t have while enjoying 50 cent hot dogs and Swedish meatballs. On the bright side, I’m more committed than ever to getting rid of all my shit when I get back to Michigan. I didn’t need it this summer and apart from some sweaters I won’t need it next year either.

Maybe you can sense that the novelty of living in Dallas has worn off a bit. A few days back while running after work, I joked that I hadn’t had a breath of fresh air all summer. You know when you say something to be flip and then immediately realize that there’s something to it? It was like that. The choices in Dallas in the summer are recycled air indoors or an ozone-rich 100 degree mess outdoors. And, at least on one Sunday in Frisco, I would’ve sooner hung out in the Port-O-John’s in the parking lot than chosen either of those options. You get what you get.

That said, there’s a ton I’ll miss about Texas:

• An Angry Dog burger, medium, with mayo and mustard. The best ever. Don’t even try to argue this in the comments, either.
• Real salsa
• Dallas farmers’ market, even those bucktoothed hucksters who claim their watermelon is sweeter than "shuhgrr"
• Fort Worth
• Galloway and Company
• Fajitas at Mia’s, the rueben and mussels at The Old Monk, St. Arnold Summer Pilsners at Gingerman
• Baseball on demand
• The Nasher Sculpture Garden
• Giant unexpected thunderstorms from nowhere that never stop
• Warm weather

And just like that, it’s time to pack again.

When we decided that we were going to move to Dallas for the summer we got a lot of looks from friends and family, ranging from quizzical to downright concerned. I believe my mother’s exact reaction was "Daaaallas." Still not quite sure what that meant. I’ve been asked numerous times what living here is like. I usually reply with a shrug that it’s a lot like living in a big city. I get the impression that no one really believes me, like they’re just sure we bought a shotgun and mounted it just above the longhorn skull on the back bumper of the Subaru.

The only way I can think to make it real for those wondering is to engage in a mental exercise. (Unfortunately those of you who didn’t grow up in eastern Iowa are going to be lost for a fair chunk of this entry. I might suggest skipping down to the craigslist part.) Imagine for a second the personification of Cedar Rapids, IA. What qualities would this guy have? What does he prefer? Now let’s say that overnight the personification of Cedar Rapids was given the power to transform himself into a giant metropolis, a regional hub of great import. How would he go about constructing himself?

Now let’s think this through. Cedar Rapids, IA is about to make itself into a city of millions. Here’s what he’ll need:

• First priority is a kick ass skyline. It’s going to need some neon and probably a giant lit up ball that looks really sweet at night. Oh! and a building that looks like a lit up argyle sock would rock.
• Extra wide lanes on the highway to protect our women and their SUVs.
• Chili’s, Chili’s, Chili’s.
• Let’s definitely have a respectable arts scene, but let’s not plan for it and have to do some urban shuffling after the fact to make it look like oh yeah, we’ve had this arts district all along!
• Probably would be a good idea to have a smaller, cooler city nearby.
• The baseball stadium should have lots of loud music because families like that.
• All car dealerships should be run by aging football heroes or guys with the same first and last name.
• Chili’s, Chili’s, Chili’s.

You get the idea. Chili’s excepted, Dallas is Cedar Rapids with better food and actual traffic (sorry Mike Neilly). Probably not as great a place to raise your kids, but as far as I can tell that’s what everyone thinks Plano’s for.

There are some significant differences though, especially compared to where we lived for most of last year. Look no further than the craigslist missed connections section for proof. In my wanderings around town I often make eyes with people in the hopes that they’ll desperately seek me out in this little corner of the web. So far, no luck. But I will say that the missed connections are dramatically different in Ann Arbor, MI than they are in north Texas. To wit:

Hey dude, next time you are driving south on 75 toward dallas and jacking off, slow down so I can watch. [full listing]

We desparately searched the area for you two but had to come back home in order to talk to the police. I’m sure you will be around, after all, where else can you steal from a mother of 4 children and 1 of them being terminally ill. I have hopes I will see again and introduce you to my gun but I’m afraid that you are probably holed up somewhere smoking that crack that makes you look like shit. [full listing]

And that’s just from our neighborhood. Still beats A2’s desperate "saw you in Whole Foods buying pomegranate and Marlboros, too shy to say hi" listings.

Quite a few experiences to report in the last few weeks. Texas is just as Texas as advertised, big enough to be both a noun and an adjective. Our empty bottles make a satisfying clink as they accumulate in the trash can, we water our flowers with gasoline, and have a car for driving to the driveway. Don’t knock the lifestyle until you’ve tried is all I’m sayin’.

Traveldistance/time is treating me well. The needle on my professional development nosed slightly closer to Full last week as I rode the elevator with our CEO down to the summer kick off party. Mind you, I didn’t say anything, but I took care to turn my security badge around so that, should she have chosen, she could have realized that she was sharing an elevator with MATTHEW. Down at the party, the festive sea shell theme did little to mask the level of experience our workforce has with the open bar.

Two weekends ago we did what many seasoned outdoorsmen thought to be impossible: we sunk a paddleboat. You know, those glorified plastic life preservers with bike pedals? It went down something like this:

*paddleboat is slowly propelled into middle of lake*
*wind picks up*
*whitecaps appear on lake*
mattbot: boy this is tough pedaling!
*wave crashes into paddleboat*
mattbot: haha, it’s like The Perfect Storm
*waves continue crashing into paddleboat for next hour and a half*
mattbot: fuck it sinks!
*boaters scramble to flag down family boaters with motor*
*humiliation, curtain*

24 hour sports talk radio is kicking my ass this summer. What better way to spend a 45 minute commute than to listen to grown men yell and scream in the second person and talk about how things gotta be "at the end of the day?" Mike and Mike in the morning suck ass, but there’s this immensely entertaining guy on during the drive home who, like Madonna, is known only by a single name. Galloway has:

• The thickest Texas drawl you can possibly imagine
• A Caray-esque ability to mangle even the easiest names
• A Caray-esque ability to sound completely drunk
• A willingness to tell anyone they’re full of shit

It’s clear why he’s appealing. At any rate, this story isn’t going anywhere unless you’ve heard the guy, but I knew I’d found something good when I flipped it on for the first time and heard a rant about how completely overrated and not worthy of the Hall of Fame Derek Jeter is. A breath of fresh air. Last evening’s gem? "The Rangers go down to Houston to play three in… the orange juice, or whatever that STUPID place is called."

For those of us who took Keyboarding instead of Industrial Tech in 9th grade, constructing a table from scratch at the tender age of 25 is a pretty big deal. Two trips to Home Depot (including one uncomfortably long wait while an employee measured 120 inches one inch at a time because he couldn’t add multiples of 30), several brackets, screws, and a Bud Light produced this glorified card table:

Of course it’s a shitty table. The screws don’t really go all the way in, it’s held together with shelving hardware, the pressboard top (probably old growth at that) is covered with $1 mistake paint, and it wobbles when the cat jumps up on it. We’ll probably throw it away in August. But it’s my Wonderbat and I’d be more than happy to share the blueprints with you.

There’s a lot to report from the last three weeks or so. We arrived in Texas, despite Oklahoma’s best efforts. We farted to entertain ourselves through Kansas. All the things that Michigan doesn’t have are here: summer, open skies, a Chili’s at every offramp, and the friendliest strangers I’ve ever met in my life. So far it’s been easy to forget that I have to go back.

We’ll dive into all that later, though. It’s been nice being disconnected the last few weeks and I just may ignore the loyal audience a little while longer. It’s nothing personal.

Iowa

Kansas

Oklahoma

Mattbot