they call me "Sugar Doll"

That's right, sucker. I'm a sugar doll. You know how I know? Says so on this award here. A thousand congratulations to Jon Paul from Where Sky Meets Ground on receiving this award himself, and a thousand thanks for bestowing it upon me. Like him, I would've questioned whether or not I was a "sugar doll" but seeing as how Entrepreneur Chick (bless her heart) has called me a "dollbaby" before, I think I'm not too far out of bounds in accepting this. I hope I'm not. I'm tickled pink to have gotten this accolade. The rules are simple: list ten facts about yourself and pass the award on to four deserving bloggers. However, since this award was given to me by a man's man (who also got it from a man's man), I shall delight you with the most masculine facts I can dish up. It's time to man up, people. Ready? Let us begin!

1. The worst hangover I ever had was the second morning of the Korean New Year, Seoul, late January 2009. My expatriate friends and I had been out on a bender the whole night previous: pub crawling, karaoke, the works. I must've drank my weight in soju. My head was literally fit to split. I couldn't even move for the first hour. The second hour I inched my hand across the tousled bedspread and somehow managed turn on the TV. The third hour I groggily watched The Matrix and thought about trying to sit up. Eventually I dragged myself into a scalding hot shower and went out for a long constitutional in the freezing winter breeze. It worked.
2. I'm not technically "scared" of anything: spiders, snakes, murky water, the dark, or whatever. But I do not like centipedes. They're not the comeliest of beasts. And they move too fast.
3. I think millipedes (and tarantulas, and slugs, and eels) are cute, though.
4. I have this Microsoft computer game called Impossible Creatures. It's a strategy game, where you are the commander of an army and have to fight other people's armies. The cool thing about it is that you make your own units. You combine different animals together to make super-powerful hybrids: amphibious whales, winged lions, gorillas with wolves' heads, elephants with hornets' stingers, bulls with porcupine spines, you name it. Anything you can imagine, you can make. The best animal I ever created was a "rhinorpion": a rhinoceros with a gigantic scorpion's tail, and pincers coming out of its shoulders. It had horns, claws, and a poisonous tail; and it was a bruiser in close combat. It couldn't stand up to my brother's lobster-shark, though.
5. I have many different ideas about what I want to do when I get old and retire, most of which fit into some stereotypical mold or other. Sometimes I want to sit in a rocking chair on the porch and dispense unsolicited pearls of wisdom; sometimes I hope to go driving my Bentley through people's flowerbeds; sometimes I wish to wear a floppy straw hat and ride around on a donkey on hot afternoons, drunk as a fiddler. I think I'll just settle for owning a corner bar and listening to people's problems, though.
6. When we lived in Tennessee, there was an enormous grassy hill right next to the long gravel driveway we shared with our neighbors. With their permission, my brother Harlan and I would sled on it in winter. In summer, we'd get our trusty little red wagon (a genuine Radio Flyer), hop in and go rolling down that hill à la Calvin and Hobbes.
7. I like the name "Azerbaijan." It just rolls off the tongue, don't it?
8. I have six scars: one on my left index finger (soap-carving accident); one on the top of my left foot (a dropped plate); three chicken-pox blemishes on my torso; and one on my right forearm (a brush with a wine rack).
9. I love Star Wars. I hate Star Trek.
10. Okay, let's see...is this list masculine enough? I've talked about drunkenness, scary animals, combat, retirement-era hell-raising, boyish pursuits, exotic places, scars, and my discerning tastes in science fiction. Looks good to me, so let's finish off with the ultimate manly pursuit: speculating about the fate of the planet. If given the chance to gain immortality, I'd pass it up. I don't want to live forever. I just wish I could live long enough to see (a) the ocean floor explored completely; (b) contact made and diplomatic relations opened with sentient beings from another planet; and (c) what manner of fantastic beasts will evolve on Earth millions of years from now.

And now for the lucky four, in no particular order:

• Gently Said: Jerry, a 65-year-old man who works in a tall building in Houston, muses on the little everyday things that make life so strange and wonderful. One man's calming thoughts on dogs, dancing, word definitions, music, family, with a bit of short fiction thrown in. Help me out here, ladies. He is most certainly a sugar doll, right?
• It Was Dark, Stormy and I Lost My Serial Comma: Here is a doting father, great storyteller, lover of Fruity Pebbles, trafficker in dirty blog titles, all around funny guy, with a warm and entertaining blog. Spells "sugar doll" to me.
• Fortune Cookies and Men: Chloe C is hip. She's a native New Yorker. She's Chinese-American, a former Serial Monogamist, self-sufficient, independent, brassy and refreshingly straightforward. What more could you want in a sugar doll?
• Jane Jones: She still believes in summer days. She knows the secret nooks and crannies of the heart and soul. She's traveled to hidden places. She likes to cook for the fun of it. She's a not-so-apologetic country music fan. But most importantly, her writing is ethereally beautiful. Familiar, somehow; like a doll for the soul. Sweet in its truth, like sugar for the mind.

Congratulations to one and all! You've earned it. And now it's time for the six o'clock news. You don't have to read all of this if you don't want to. It's rather long. Just pick and choose the headlines that look interesting, like I do when I read a newspaper. AREA MOTHER PURCHASES NEW DOG You remember the new collie we got a few months back, Maggie? We had to euthanize her. She had a herniated esophagus or something. Couldn't stop hacking up bile. We had to put her down; it was either that or let her suffer. Not wanting my dog Harriet to be lonesome, Mom and Dad stopped by the Apple Valley animal shelter a couple of weeks ago, perused the selection and picked out a seven-month-old German shepherd. They signed the paperwork and a few days later (after he was "fixed") brought him home. We dubbed him Dash, and he's an absolute champ. Things were a bit rocky at first; he whined a lot until he got used to his surroundings, and we had to set some boundaries for him. (No climbing on the furniture, unless it's the old futon in the front room, and the kitchen is strictly verboten.) He still doesn't walk on a leash very well, and can't sit on command, but he knows his name and is learning to fetch the squeaky tennis balls he loves so much. At seven months, he's not fully grown; his feet, ears and tail are awkward and oversize. He'll grow into them, though. He's going to be a truly massive dog, 120 pounds, the vets reckoned. That's more than twice what Mom's old Belgian sheepdog Molly weighed full-grown! GARBAGE TRUCK GETS STUCK IN QUICKSAND The tremendous rains we had a little while ago washed the roads out something terrible. We had huge gouts and ruts and swathes carved out of neighborhood streets. We're so far out in the sticks that the roads aren't maintained by the county, so we have to shift for ourselves. The local water board got out its heavy equipment and began bulldozing the roads flat again, filling in the ruts. In this case, that created a problem. The ruts were filled, but they were filled with loose sand and smoothed over. I went out walking shortly after the work was finished, and when I stepped on this smooth and deceptively firm sand, my foot sank in up to the ankle. It wasn't quicksand, but it was the next best thing. I was out painting the eaves last week when I heard a peculiar banging sound in the distance. I looked around, but couldn't see where it was coming from. A short while later, I heard it again. Bang bang bang bang bang. I turned around. Behind the house, just up the block at the corner of Corto and Horizon, I saw one of the big maroon-and-white Avco Disposal garbage trucks. It was just sitting there, cocked across the intersection at an odd angle. As I looked, I heard the engine rev up. Dust began to fly. The truck started to shake, so violently that it began to make the metallic banging sound I'd heard earlier. Then it stopped, and sat quietly again. I'd been stuck in loose sand too many times not to realize what was happening. I saw a couple other people gathering about the truck, so I didn't just jump off the ladder, snatch up a shovel, and go and help. I kept painting, figuring that if the truck was still stuck by the time I finished the south side of the house, then I'd go and help. I was almost done with the southwest corner at the time. I finished, and the truck was still stuck. So I put everything away, opened the shed, grabbed a shovel, slung it jauntily over my shoulder, and strolled the hundred yards up the dusty road to the site of the disturbance. I must've looked a sight: work boots, cargo shorts, a Chargers cap (on backwards), sunglasses, and a red T-shirt reading THE PARTY HAS ARRIVED. Plus the shovel on my shoulder. Superdude to the rescue. The garbage truck, trying to turn around at the intersection, had run straight into the sand loosely packed into a former culvert, and had gotten stuck. I actually didn't wind up doing much. I shoveled some loose sand out of the way of the truck's tires, and tamped down some more behind them, but Kert (the driver) still couldn't get out. Another garbage truck came and tried to pull Kert's truck out of the sand with a chain, but then he started slipping. Finally, a semi with a winch was dispatched to the site and managed to yank 'er out. While we waited, I had a lovely chat with Kert, the woman who owned the house in front of which he'd gotten stuck (Jeanette, and her articulate, autistic, adopted son, Elijah), and a couple other neighbors I'd never spoken to before. It was a lovely day and rather nice to talk to new people. Elijah and I had an erudite discussion on why stop-motion and other old-fashioned cinematic effects were superior to computer graphics. ASPIRING BARTENDER POLISHES OFF MOST DIFFICULT LESSON That's right. On Monday I went down to Riverside and, after a grueling three hours and 40 minutes, passed both parts of the wickedly tricky Lesson 7, concerning shots. It wasn't hard, per se, but there were so many ingredients to remember and so many different mixing methods that I came close to forgetting myself. I just barely made the six-minute time limit on both parts of the test, even despite the rather raunchy mnemonic devices I'd learned. A strawberry cheesecake shot, for example (vanilla vodka, cranberry juice, and cream) has to be mixed, shaken, and poured. B-52s (Kahlúa, Bailey's, and Grand Marnier) need merely be layered. But Scooby Snacks (Midori, crème de bananes, Malibu coconut rum, pineapple juice, and cream) have to be shaken with the tin and then cracked like an egg into an old-fashioned glass. Like I said, tricky. But I passed it. Now I just have Lesson 5 (blended drinks) left, and then the final, and then a bit of POS training and job placement, and then...I'm a bartender! And in brief... I've resumed flying after taking a six-week hiatus (due to money issues which have been resolved thanks to Mom and Dad). I'm doing instrument work, where they strap a hood over your eyes so you can only see your instruments and gauges and not what's going on outside the plane. Then they tell you to do stuff. I think I'll put that in a separate post. Dad had some coworkers from Lake Tahoe down for dinner last night. I was the designated bartender. I only made one drink (a vodka martini), but I made it well. I was also introduced to a new libation I'd never heard of before, even at bartender's school: something called an "astronaut." I'll have to ask Wade about that one... Finally, the weather's been lovely. Sixties and seventies, sunny, breezy, hardly a cloud in the sky. Spring's already sprung in the desert, and once again I'm sweating on my 4.6-mile walks. Just wait'll it's still 90 degrees out at sunset. Sigh...I miss winter already. Not.