My Reno

After languishing in bed for a full 4 hours of sleep last night it was up and off to a waiting room full of desperate uninsured indigents to wait for a doctor’s appointment.
Yes, that would make me one of the above mentioned group.

First come first served (and boy do you get what you pay for) so it was a long-ass wait. For a short-ass visit.

On the way home I passed by the courthouse where I was treated to a group of fabulously bedecked women playing rhythm instruments and waving a sign proclaiming “Prom Queens for Peace!”
Since I’d already driven through our neon strewn downtown, narrowly avoiding tourists, drunken businessmen, gamblers, Stephen Hawking in his souped-up diet coke-menthos powered wheelchair and the homeless this didn’t strike me as particularly odd.
Crosswalks and streetlights mean nothing in this town. Drive at your own peril my friends.

As a trip to the doc’s is normally depressing it seemed a fine idea to stop by Zephyr Books. This is a fairly new used book store located on Virginia and only a few blocks from my house. I was in the mood for another Harry Crews book.
Nothing like a bit of seriously twisted southern gothic to cheer me up.

I asked the proprietor where to look and he directed me to the fiction section where, alas, there were no Crews books to be found. So I diligently looked for something else to cheer me up. Perhaps John Fante, Bukowski, or Augusten Burroughs.
Seems I’m going through a fiction phase right now. I vacillate between this genre and the physics and science tomes. Depends on my mood.
Doesn’t everything.

Well I did find Running with Scissors (recommended by my friend Rebecca) which cheered me up. I also found The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, which surprised me since I was about to order a new copy from Amazon this week. The latter was recommended by TK who is reading it now.
So a bit of fiction and a bit of non-fiction in the mix for this week.
It’s a nifty bookstore. Check it out.

This afternoon it was time to get out of the house again. The sun came out even though the fucking Reno afternoon winds are blowing. I took a walk around my new neighborhood. A strange mix similar to my old place. Immaculately kept Craftsmen homes from the 1920’s next to unkempt 1930’s bungalows next to beautiful brick homes built anywhere from 1910 to the mid 1940’s.
It’s pretty cool. There’s so much to look at if you have an eye for architecture and, well, life in general.

The reason I was able to take a walk was that damned wind. I was supposed to be out on the Reno Chicken Cam Project.
Suffice to say that it involves Nino (one of the other Producers from the TV station where I used to work), similar video mavens, and of course a live chicken fitted with a harness and wireless video cam.
The shoot was supposed to start downtown in front of the El Cortez (a hotel and peculiar bar) at 4:00 and move on from there.
I got an email informing me that the possibility of the chicken literally being blown down the street may put a damper on the project. So, shooting was cancelled for today.

That brings us to right now; where I sit at my desk listening to Joe Jackson, American Spirit burning in the ashtray, beverage of choice at hand and typing this treatise. I gotta tell you that tomorrow may not bring me as many glimpses into Life in Reno.
Unless I leave the house.

~Miss R