um... am i the only one who thinks this borders on weird/awkward?

a thousand apologies for my absence, friends, i've just gotten back to austin after a last-minute biz trip to nyc (complete with yummy turkish food, an uber-trendy boutique hotel and good times with diane-marie and stephen, of course)... and i totally have this post about nyc vs. texas written in my head which i promise i will upload soon, but that will have to wait a bit as i am actually still at the office and therefore not in a great place to write my oh-so-witty post.

but dudes!

DUUUUUDES.

at-work status be damned, i HAVE to tell you all this story and see if i'm the weird one for being really thrown off-guard by this. here's the story:

i'm coming home from the airport in a taxi, hurriedly schlepping all my stuff to my apt. door b/c i need to drop my stuff and drive into the office for a conference call. as i'm unlocking my door, a woman with an adorable pug walks by and i immediately drop everything to coo over the dog (and yes, erin, i used to the official Cooing Dog Voice). she's very friendly and willing to let me play with her pug, so we start chatting in a casual, friendly way... you know, stuff like, hey, are you moving in, yup, my company is putting me up here for a few weeks. and then i say well technically, i'm actually switching to a different unit this wknd so i guess i won't be in this exact apt anymore.

she looks a bit puzzled so i try and explain and say that maybe it's the city girl in me, but i prefer not to be on the ground floor as a single woman. she still looks puzzled so i get even more defensive (say it with me: why should i care enough to get defensive?) and explain that i was broken into, etc. at this point she tells me she's moving out soon too but that's only b/c she just bought a house, she's lived on the ground floor for five years, it's very safe, she's never had a problem, etc etc. which leaves me feeling kinda dumb, so i just make a lame joke about "hey, at least you have a scary guard dog, har har" (referring to a six-month-old puppy that comes halfway up my calf and would probably lick me if i was a burglar). she laughs at my joke (which is nice) but then says, "well yes, but i also have a firearm."

....

i tried to salvage my silence with some catch-all "ahh, i see" type response, said bye to the woman and her dog, gathered all my things and went into my apt. and she went into hers. she's my neighbor.

moral of the story: you know you're in texas when your next-door neighbors make casual references to the firearms they keep in their residence...

how would YOU have responded, i ask you??