Hola, amigos. Been a while since I rapped at ya. With good reason, though. Nothing noteworthy at all has been going on. It's been raining too much for spraying any stencils, but I do have some ideas for new ones.

Kate and I have decided to take a break from The Sopranos for a while -- just until we stop thinking about solving every problem by putting a hit out of somebody.

On the good side, I finished my Fuller application, and I get to check out the campus (and the fair city of Pasadena) next week. Woo-hoo! Maybe I'll take some pictures.

Oh, man, it's been forever and an hour since I posted. It seems like after a brief flurry of activity, nobody (including myself) has been posting much on their blogs lately. Well, I don't know about you guys, but I've been writing progress reports and doing lots of last-minute grading. Also, I've been paying off my massive debt to UT and writing two 250 word application essays which seem to be excruciatingly difficult.

With all this stuff to do, my procrastination has been remarkably productive. (See? I just remarked on it.) I've put up three stencils (two Lyles, one Endicott) in my neighborhood, and I'm planning a few new designs. Last night was my most brazen stencil-spraying. It was around 11:30 PM, and there was a group people just down the block from me, who may or may not have been watching as I nonchalantly taped the Lyle to a dumpster and sprayed it with black paint. It looks tite. I wish my digital camera was working. I may have to go over it again in red though, for visibility.

I'm really looking forward to this summer. I can't believe that I'm going to actually GET PAID while not DOING ANY WORK. I have trips to Beaumont, Los Angeles and (potentially) New Orleans planned so far. Now all I have to do is pay attention to work for three more months.

This weekend, I returned the beloved G4 to my good friend Melio in Pittsburgh. We met in Princeton, West Virginia. It was a relatively uneventful trip -- a bit of stencil tagging in the Applebee's parking lot, but other than that, nothing really. A missed turn, a bacon cheeseburger. Nothing out of the ordinary for a Lazlo road trip.

As usual, I listened to a lot of bad radio. I heard one of my favorite crappy country songs. It's called "I Wanna Do It All," and it's by Terri Clark. It's horrible. It has the most inane lyrics you can probably imagine. Almost every line is a cliché. I heard the song as I was driving through Virginia, and I noticed a lyric I hadn't heard before. It was something like, "I wanna start a NASCAR tradition, y'all." I thought it was kind of strange that I hadn't noticed that line before, given my hatred of NASCAR.

THEN, TODAY -- Kate and I were in the kitchen, and I flipped the radio to a country station just as this stinking pile of a song was coming on the air. "OH, KATE!" I said, "You have to hear this horrible song!" I waited and waited for the NASCAR line (my new favorite), but IT NEVER CAME. Instead, she sang, "I wanna watch the Jaguars play ball," which I also found odd. SO, I DECIDED to some INTERNET SLEUTHING. On Google alone, there are at least SEVEN VARIATIONS of this song!

They are:
1) Watch the Gators play ball,
2) Watch the O's play ball,
3) Watch the Ravens play ball,
4) Watch the Packers play ball,
5) Watch the Browns play ball,
6) Watch the Rams play ball, and
7) Watch the Yankees play ball.

I suppose that Virginia just doesn't have a ball-oriented sports team with enough of a following to justify faking another version of this song. BUT THAT'S NOT THE POINT.

Can you believe this crap? This is worse than Clear Channel faking local DJs. This is the cheapest, most insidious pandering I've ever heard of. It's not hard to please country fans, but Terri Clark has stooped to a new low, here. I ... I don't even know what to say about this atrocity. Am I too easily offended?

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Also, while you're answering that; I'm trying to come up with a better word for "stencil." The word stencil connotes somebody sprucing up their mobile home with a floral pattern on their bathroom walls. Any ideas?

- I made another STENCIL, and it's totally BITCHIN'. It looks much better in real life. My digital camera's memory card decided to CRAP OUT right after I took that mediocre picture. See if you can figure out who it is. I can't wait to get this one up in my 'hood.

- My recently-acquired and much-loved (especially by Kate) G4 is going back to her rightful owner. Tomorrow she ships out. It will be a sad day in the Hollyfeld household. Now I have to figure out what the crap is wrong with my ailing PC, or it's no Sopranos for a long time -- and no Six Feet Under, on that blessed day (June 22, I think) when the season two DVD ships.

- It sucks being poor. I mean it. It's homemade iced tea instead of Diet Dr Pepper from now until next month. Thank goodness Kate is working.

- Kate gave some props to my virtual homeboy just now (whom I've never even met); she was reading the comments on SOMEONE ELSE'S BLOG, when she spontaneously exclaimed, "Michael Rice makes it happen." I have no idea what that means, but I'm afraid I'm going to have to beat somebody up now.

AND ...

- A friend I shall call KABULO for the purposes of this webuhlog had KITTENS recently. And I thought she was spayed.

I had an eventful weekend.

- I went MOUNTAIN BIKING. Or, to be more precise, I went TRAIL BIKING. In the rain. Near Raleigh. It was fun. My tires were overinflated (my fault), my glasses were seriously fogged (due to the rain), and I'm incredibly out of shape. I also ENDOed into a tree. It was crucial. In fact, I had to remove my shoe in order to extricate my foot from my bike. Then I accidently hawked a massive loogie on my hand.

- I checked in on my AWESOME STENCIL in Raleigh. That photo is not doctored; the neon pink really does stand out like that. It's a like a beacon of absurdity.

- My NEIGHBORS (the aforementioned drunken hillbillies) got in some sort of fight. Kate and I were watching the Sopranos on DVD (which we've been into lately) and we could hear the fracas building outside. This is not an abnormal thing by any means. These neighbors are almost always drunk in the front yard, yelling obscenely at one another. Something about the screaming ("GET OFF MY OLD MAN!") made me think that this time it wasn't a normal fight, and so I called the cops. Shortly afterwards, I heard tires screeching as a car surged away from their yard, leaving a guy on the pavement moaning, "call 9-1-1 ..." I think his hand or arm got run over. I joined my other, saner neighbors on the street and shared a few moments of neighborly gossip. It was weird.

THE RESULTS ARE IN;

I tried the syrup, and it's gross. Kate agrees. It's way, way, way sweeter than regular syrup. If I didn't know that it was actually rather expensive syrup, I would have assumed that it was cheap. And how wrong I would be.

SLANG ALERT:

"Crucial." Please don't let me start using this word. Some of my students say this. "Man, have you heard that track? It's crucial." (That means "good.") I'm desperately trying not to pick this one up. Not that I think it's not cool, but I would really rather not start talking like a 16 year-old. I've already picked up a few phrases, like "OFF DA CHAINZ" and "bumpin'," but those are just too good to resist. "Yo, you crackafro is BUMPIN', G."

I discovered today that there are at least three grades of maple syrup. Grades A, B, and "EDV," which I'm assuming stands for "Edible with Daily Vaccinations." I went with the Whole Foods brand "Grade A."

STAY TUNED FOR MORE DETAILS!

Kate gave her dad the blog address in a letter today, so he'll get to discover soon just how inane I really am under the suave, urbane, sophisticated façade.

Also, I'm working on a new stencil. It's gonna be the baddest. I'll give you a hint: it's a face this time, and it's an homage to one of my favorite celebrities, as well as a very subtle diss on North Carolina. Pictures will follow when I'm done. I need some new X-Acto blades. (Blades may not need reloading, but they do need replacing every once in a while.)

All right.

I'm not really interested in making my own Kahlua. I just want to be able to make a black russian without having to shell out mad coin for an overpriced bottle of frou-frou liquor from the NC Alcoholic Beverage Commission. And I would never pickle my own kraut, because I hate it.

I would, however, distill out my own sea salt if I lived near the beach.

sometimes, i can see chase thinking...

"we have coffee, we have cream... why can't we make our own kahlua?" this is the old argument, which, while perfectly reasonable under the guises of "change our own oil," and "paint our own house," becomes increasingly problematic when it veers into "pickle our own cabbage," and "recycle our own wastewater." both of which have been discussed. i think chase would harvest his own salt if we lived on the beach.

speaking of which, i can't wait to go to the beach.

i'm a full-fledged nanny now, and it's honestly pretty strange to have sudden authority (ha) in a situation where you're really just a random person in their house until their parents get home. these are smart kids, and most of the time i'm just terrified they'll realize i have no reason to be there, and stop listening to me.

me: "don't go outside..." (door opens, he leaves, door closes) "...for too long"

i just have to remember my days as a vicious camp counselor, my mighty tread on the cabin stair eliciting immediate silence and feigned sleep by 10-12 year old girls everywhere.