A week and a half ago, at the big rest-stop mini-mart on the Hutch Parkway, I overheard a beefy guy say to the clerk, "Can I get a pack of Parliament Lights, and this guy [holds up a half-eaten donut]."

For some reason I found that hilarious enough to write down on a scrap of paper.

I had a very nice Fourth, did you? I didn't see any real fireworks, but there was a lot of barbecuing and some Jarts-playing and some guitar out on the deck and such. It was lovely. Today I am enjoying the discombobulated feeling of being back at work after a mid-week holiday. I was glad to have such a good day off from everything, since I was just told that one of my favorite work-friends is leaving the office for greener pastures (good for her, but bad for me, selfishly), and god knows who will replace her, plus my cat's health has been declining alarmingly and it turns out I don't want to let her go, ever. I'm doing the best I can for her, I think. I hope so, at any rate.

It's been raining super-hard all day, and I'm bummed about it only because a co-worker with a nice house with a nice big meadow-y yard invited a bunch of us over for a BBQ tonight to watch the fireflies. I miss having a yard, especially a yard where fireflies might like to gather (you know, NOT THAT I'M BITTER). I took a walking tour around the weird, tiny village of Laurel Park last weekend, where a bunch of tiny cottages are for sale at condo prices (all I can afford, apparently)... One of them I've seen in the real estate pages for many months, and finally saw in person; it's a nice small size, and has a nice very tiny patio, but the main problem is that it's right up next to the other houses, and there's only one parking space with no other parking anywhere nearby. Laurel Park is not designed for people who would like the occasional guest at their home. There's another cottage that's better positioned, bigger, and with a more private yard, but it's appropriately more expensive, and I'm getting cold feet about the whole thing. I have a couple of women friends who have managed to buy small houses in this town, so I should just wait it out until i can find one, too, instead of settling.

Sorry if this is terribly boring, but I'm in my early-mid-30s, and that means I am contractually obligated to become obsessed with real estate.

Edited: It stopped raining, and the bbq did happen. The fireflies put on quite a show for us. I bruised my thumb playing volleyball. Also, some work friends and I did bar trivia at the Deuce tonight; if our answer sheet had been a test, our team would have gotten an F (wait, is there anything lower than an F?).

I woke up at four this morning to the scent of smoke. I bolted out of bed and peered outside. The street was all foggy, though the stars and the moon were crystal-clear. Bad. I went to the side window and heard men shouting at each other and an odd whishing sound (from the hoses). Turns out it was another multi-dwelling house (just like mine) a street or two away. It's very good to know that the smell of smoke will wake me up; I've always imagined it wouldn't, and I'd have to wait for the smoke detector to go off.

The firemen never turned on their truck sirens, which is ultra-considerate to sleeping neighbors. They didn't have them on when the car in front of my house was on fire, either. Of course, that's probably because there wasn't any traffic to plow through... but still, I'll take it.

Here's a Flickr photo set of the aftermath, and a link to the story of the fire in the local paper (well, not the really local paper, which doesn't let you read articles online for free). Officials suspect foul play! At least nobody was hurt, and a pet bunny -- named, ironically, Smokey -- was saved.

I know this sounds crazy, but I swear I just saw Seth Green, the actor, inside Better Thyme Deli. He had a cowboy hat on, and was sitting at the table that's kind of hidden behind the drinks cooler, chatting with a friend who had a stuffed-full loose-leaf binder. I wasn't quite sure it was him, but then as I was extra-slowly filling up my salad bar container, I heard him say the words "my next project" and then "television show". So I am now 90 percent sure it was him. But in town for what? A coworker suggested I ask whoever's working at Pleasant Street Video today, which is a fine idea as those kids have their fingers on the pulse of the local film production schedule.

This post is entitled "Local Wildlife."

I was walking down Main Street on Sunday, discussing with my boyfriend where we should go on our walk. I was suggesting we head over to the botanical gardens. It was crowded downtown and the motorcycles were all parked in a line outside of Starbucks. "Don't you want to get away from all of these loud, annoying motorcycles?" I said, and then half-heard a leering grizzled whiskey voice say, "Well I guess you like my ride!" It took me a minute to process that the leathery chump was talking to me, and by that time I was down the block, feeling thoroughly un-indimidated and unimpressed. Those middle-aged AA-dropout bikers have got to start trying a little harder if they really want to be seen as badasses.

[My friend Lesa should probably skip this next part.] Tonight, I was walking swiftly to my car parked in the gravel lot behind the house, when my neighbor said from her second-floor deck, "D, stop! There's a bear!" Indeed, there was a black bear not a foot from my car, digging through a trash can he had knocked over. He was the size of a large dog. I shouted, "Hey, bear! Get away!" but, like an overgrown urban raccoon, he totally ignored me and kept slowly and peacefully rifling through the garbage. After a minute or so he ambled behind the garage to the neighbor's yard. There have been black bear sightings in people's yards in town for a couple of years, but this is the first one I've actually seen, let alone the first I've heard of in my neighborhood. Yet again, I probably wasn't as wary or scared as I should have been. Not that I got any closer to him than about 25 feet, but I mainly didn't want to get closer because bears shouldn't get accustomed to being near humans.

The bears and the bikers need to join some kind of Ultimate Fighting Championship club to butch up their images.

Finally, it is time for: Vacation Highlights!

Asilomar, where it was incredibly windy in the evening, and where we could always hear the ocean. We walked down and checked out the tidepools a few times, and I got to see actual pretty starfish and cute hermit crabs in the actual wild.

Roaring Camp, where we took a steam train ride up through a redwood forest on a mountain and back down again. Because it was Memorial Day, they had an encampment of Civil War reenactors - both Union and Confederate. They were a long way from the Mason-Dixon line.

Monterey Aquarium, where there are frolicking sea otters, ocean waves you can stand under, and a very decent cafeteria. And of which I have no good photos.

Riding the Giant Dipper roller coaster at the Santa Cruz boardwalk, mainly because I got my sister to ride it (plus it was wicked fun) and my dad did too (he'll ride anything). We even bought the overpriced on-ride photo.

Going to the weird bay by a power plant that had a flock (a herd?) of wild sea otters hanging around in it. One otter seemed to have fallen deeply asleep, as it drifted slowly to shore until it grounded itself in the sand. I crept up to him to take photos, and besides occasional nose-clearing snorts he didn't react at all. Eventually (after I got bored and left) he roused himself and rejoined the group.

The Exploratorium at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco. The five grownups were a little too old for the place, and the one kid a little two young, but we all had fun times regardless, shoving Catholic school kids out of the way so we could turn a puff of smoke into a cyclone or watch an embryonic chicken's heart beating.

The Musee Mechanical, a museum of working coin-operated music-making devices, mutoscopes, fortune-tellers, and more. It was my third time there and I would still go back again and again.

Seeing Avani for the first time in 8 years! I can't believe it had been that long. She showed me around the Mission, where we ate brunch amid hipsters, tried on funny hats, and marvelled at the hunky gay men sunbathing in Mission Dolores park.

The wedding, the whole reason for the trip. My first-cousin-once-removed is very inspiring: This is her first time getting hitched, and she's 55. Her wedding dress was made of cloth she bought in Pakistan ten years ago when she was working with UNICEF there. She's lived all over the world. She's a classy dame.

Of course there were also a few Vacation Lowlights!

Discovering a dead roach on the floor of our room in Asilomar as we were unpacking. Rustic!

Finding out that my niece Lula will actually throw up in the car from motion sickness, if properly provoked. (Then, helping my sister rinse the vomit out of Lula's clothes in the sink of a GettyMart.)

Being with my family 24/7 was sometimes a challenge. I should have taken more advantage of my ability to take off on my own.

I didn't really feel like I had enough time in actual San Francisco, though mostly that feeling was due to the contraints of traveling with a toddler who takes a 2-plus hour nap in the afternoon and who is supposed to go to bed at 8. The three 30-somethings traded off a night with the 50-somethings so we could go out to eat in a proper restaurant (and get take out the second night).

Coming back to several very rush-rush things awaiting me at work, which I am in the middle of tackling.

All-in-all, not a bad way to spend ten days. I posted some choice photos from all of these things (plus things I have not even bored you with yet!) in the gallery here. There are captions and stuff so it's kind of like a blog BONUS! Woo-hoo.
P.S. If you are new at the internet, you should know that you can click on the thumbnails to make the photos bigger.

I'm back from vacation. I survived! California is very beautiful. I can see why people live there. They don't seem to understand why I live here, but then I came home (drove from NYC and got home at 9:30 last night) and the crickets were chirping and it smelled really good and earthy and sweet. I am working on a longer post full of photos but it's taking me forever, so this mini-prologue will have to do for now. Hello.

I am amazed nearly every day at what music gets put into commercials nowadays. Yesterday I heard The Magnetic Fields' "I Think I Need A New Heart" playing in an ad for Cesar canned dog food. And an Iron and Wine song has been in an M&Ms ad for months. I hate those stupid anthropomorphic candy blobs, so that ad makes me sad. Usually recognizing music in ads doesn't bother me, though; the artists are making money off of what they do.

I am in the middle of doing all of the various small tasks that must be done before a long-ish trip. I'm leaving on vacation this weekend for a 10-day trip to California. It's for a family wedding the weekend afterwards. My nuclear family decided to make a vacation out of it, and here we are, all ready to JetBlue over to Oakland airport Saturday morning, me and my parents, my sister and her husband, and my niece. The trip is divided into thirds: We're starting at Asilomar, then going to San Francisco, and ending up in a town near SF called Lafayette. Not all of the places we're staying have internet access, so I might be hard to reach. I'd love to post photos as I go, as I'm sure I'll be taking a lot of them, and of course they will be awesome.

I had a physical today, the first one I have ever driven myself to (meaning I haven't had one since I was a kid). I wanted to get one before I started an exercise program, and now I no longer have a reason to not join the gym. Which means I've just made a huge mistake. Anyway, the physical was enlightening, in that I found out I do not actually have a heart murmur, and constructive, in that I got a prescription for lotion for my old-lady's nose (rosacea), and painful, in that they gave me a tetanus shot. I also had my first ever EKG, which was kind of neat. My heart is fine. I was hoping my doctor would scan the peaks and valleys and divine my romantic future, but instead he said something about my Q levels being within normal limits.

He also took a very brief geneological history, sketching a small chart on a blank piece of paper. In the middle of it, he asked, "Now, are you part-nerd?" I was surprised at the question, because it didn't seem to really bear on my health, but my doctor is slightly odd and open-minded, so maybe he was trying to determine how my lifestyle might be having an effect on my body... I was about to say "yes, how did you know?" until I suddenly realized he was actually saying "partnered." Thus proving that I am at least part-nerd, if not full.

I think I should change my profile photo, since my dog got a new owner (love that passive voice) almost two years ago. It's hard for me to give up those graceful tails. It's a nice shot, if I do say so myself.

Lots of bad news yesterday left me shaken and hyper at work, transitioning to full-on exhaustion by quittin' time. And nothing happened to me personally, is the thing. Empathy makes me a delicate flower sometimes. One of the bad things: The former home of B-Side Records, and independent record store, is going to become a Dunkin' Donuts. That's right, even though there's a full-sized stand-alone DD about a third of a mile away on King Street, and those mini-DDs inside two seperate gas stations in town, they're opening up a Dunkin' one short block away from Starbucks. Even closer to the site is the just-closed Javanet, another coffee shop. People in this town do not mind paying a lot for very good coffee and very good pastry. Why would anyone choose to go to Dunkin' Donuts while surrounded by other, better options? I'm hoping it'll have a quick and quiet death. Main Street has enough chain stores.

The other bad thing is very bad, a tragedy that happened to a friend, who hasn't yet mentioned anything on his blog so I'll leave it at that. The town's community of dreamy ne'er-do-wells, bohemians, and reformed-bohemians are rallying their support behind him.

There goes an ex-boyfriend. Two of them walk by my office windows on a daily basis. No hard feelings, it's just funny-strange. I especially like spying the one who just walked by, because he's from such a long time ago. We were very different from each other back then and have diverged even further over the years.

Speaking of things outside my window, I did visit the Pride rally on Saturday. It was packed. No gay rides per se, but there was a bounce house for the kids! I always get wistful about those, ever since one magical day near the end of my first year in college, when the graduating class spent their remaining activity money on a free bounce house and elephant rides next to the dorms. That was one of the funnest days of my life. Anyway, there were many booths selling rainbowed items and t-shirts, my favorites being the ones for kids saying stuff like "I love my two mommies" and "future folk singer." There were also many dogs of all sizes, including a very impressive pink poodle. Dakin Animal Shelter had a booth; I always give them money because I got my lovely dog there. They had a few dogs hanging around: a greyhound, a very gentle but huge Doberman with uncropped ears (I wanted that one), and a small toothless terrier, so of course I had to visit with them for a few minutes. I didn't buy any fried dough, but I was tempted. The Herrell's ice cream truck was there, even though the actual Herrell's is located less than 50 yards away. I escaped the rally and grabbed a slice from Luna's instead.

One good thing I learned yesterday: It's been all but confirmed (and maybe someone can confirm it for reals) that the Moan and Dove is coming to the former Silk Road location. They'd better get it going soon so I can enjoy a big goblet of Chimay with the front of the bar all open to the elements, and buy a drink or five for my friend.

The Gay Pride parade is tomorrow (or as it's referred to in town, just "Pride," as in "Pride is tomorrow"). I like to watch the parade, which is always festive and fun and they throw a lot of candy to the crowd, but I've never been to the rally afterwards. I have always pictured it just being kind of boring, filled with crappy folk music and lots of pamphlets lying on tables. But this year, the rally is happening in the parking lot outside of my window, and amongst the many tents they've been setting up all day is a Fried Dough truck! Rapture. Maybe there'll be rides, too? Gay rides? Rides that are proud? Fried dough is enough of a reason. I might have to actually check it out this year.

Last night I went to see a show at the Iron Horse: Harry and the Potters. I would never have gone but my Rockumentary friends were opening. There was a very nice crowd there; they had to open up the upstairs seating area. The audience was mostly all high school and college-aged women, all of a certain geeky type. A few men were mixed in, and a few parents-and-kids. Harry and the Potters were insane. They're two young guys, and they do this sunny punk-ish music using a Casio and a drum machine, and all of their lyrics are about Harry Potter. They, themselves, are Harry, and they call each other HP Year Seven and HP Year Four. They refer to themselves as "we" as in "we had to go save the school, again" and "we had a problem with a troll" and the like. The HPs started it off by saying "Voldemort hates it when you dance and have a good time!" and they kept up the rocking for the entire set, ending with the super-sweet anthem "The Weapon" which was about the most powerful weapon Harry has, which of course is love. No wonder the chicks dig them. They're very energetic on stage, and they frequently jumped into the crowd and got other people to sing (shout) along. The dance floor was packed (I was standing safely in the back). A fair number of people already knew all the words to their songs. Songs about what a jerk Cornelius Fudge is, and how nobody calls Ron Weasley "the Weasel" but they really should. My friend L and I kept looking at each other with our mouths open in shock and delight. We each bought shirts: She got a "This guitar is a horcrux" shirt, and I got a "Save Ginny" shirt.

They are seconds away from getting sued, I'm sure, but I hope they last as long as possible before getting ceased-and-desisted. They're playing at Northsix in Brooklyn on May 14. I'm just saying.

You know what's wrong with "lost pet" flyers? Lack of follow-up. I want to know if Oscar the cat was ever found, or if the puppy those hippies downtown didn't put on a leash (because, presumably, all creatures deserve to be free) ended up getting crushed by a car like I predicted. I am addicted to watching Animal Precinct, and they always provide me with closure: That dog died from starvation, and here's the asshole responsible, going off in handcuffs. This dog got its leg amputated but now has a happy new home. Stuff like that. But these lost posters, they just hang around on telephone poles and parking signs until the tape deteriorates and they fall off in the rain. It's very unsatisfying.

Speaking of telephone poles, I had to go to Hadley this morning, and several crews of electricians in those bucket-ladder trucks (I'm sure there's a name for them, but I'm not a five-year-old boy, so I don't know what it is) appeared to be connecting the power lines in the new row of poles on Rt. 9. They're widening the road there, you see, which means the telephone poles that once were snug against the roadway had to be moved back about 8 feet. So for months there's been a double-row of poles and wires. And now, progress!

It's spring, and in the spring I always want to 1. buy a house or a condo, and 2. get a dog. So far I haven't taken any steps in either of these directions, which is probably a very good thing. But it doesn't mean I won't waste some time on Petfinder (look at this guy! Or this cutie, or this one. Ow, my heart hurts...) or on the MLS searches, doing a little virtual window shopping. Sigh...

Non-sequitur P.S.: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

So, I Learned About Diversity. And while there was some obvious stuff about how hearing diverse voices makes our product better, it was relatively non-patronizing. They were very into us tapping the very-quickly-growing hispanic market. And by "us" I mean the other, bigger magazine that shares its office with ours. There was only one instance where a co-worker said, "I mean, when I was a little kid my best friend was black. I didn't care what color she was!" Which is just such a cliche. Everyone has had that experience -- well, maybe not the people who grew up in Whitey Hills, where I live how. But still, it doesn't mean you are more open-minded or special.

There was one activity where we broke into five groups, each one being a different station on the "scale of tolerance." We could pick where we went, so of course I raced right over to number 5, Repulsion. Then the leaders read out scenarios about a fictional co-worker, and we were to write down a response to match the level of tolerance we were at. All of the old-timer cynical snarksters had run over to Repulsion with me, so our responses were pretty awesome. We hated this fictional co-worker so much that when he'd say something in a meeting, we'd start shaking our heads in disagreement as soon as he started to speak, and once he was finished we'd cut in with a "That would never, ever work." At the end the leaders had us rate this fictional co-worker's chances of success in the company, and of course we were supposed to say "0-10%" or something. But the members of the Repulsion team are so jaded and bitter that we ended up answering "50%, because obviously someone liked him enough to hire him in the first place, so there's a good chance he'll get promoted to management."

I'm not sure what the point of the exercise was.

All in all it was pretty painless. And now I can say I've been trained in diversity!

Wow, it's been a week already! I have been sick, so between all of the extra napping and tea-and-soup eating and the not-leaving-the-house, it's like no time has passed (or that ALL time has passed...). I am assuming I caught something on my Florida trip, which makes me afraid of what will happen on the big family trip I'm taking over the week of Memorial Day. It will be my first real vacation, well, ever in my adult life (and it's with my parents and my sister -- how fucking sad is THAT). I'll have to try that Airborne crap, even though echinacea has finally been proven to be bullshit. Zinc and C still work, though.

It's all pretty out. But I still feel like shit. A week ago I was looking forward to beginning my after-work bike rides in the countryside, but because my body is filled with ague, my bike remains crammed into my storage space in the basement. I didn't go out at all on the weekend, so I missed whatever spring-fever/full-moon deliriousness might have been happening downtown. Last night in bed I had a horrible tickly sore throat problem. It took me forever to fall asleep, and I had to be on my stomach with my face planted in the mattress so there'd be no post-nasal drippage. And then I woke up at dawn with my throat so dry and tickly and painful that I could not stop coughing and gagging, and I had to pop a Hall's and fall asleep with it in my mouth. I woke up with a sliver of it still undissolved on my tongue. Good times.

Diversity training is this Thursday. I can't wait. I will give you a full report.

I have recently heard from someone in the know that the janitorial staff at my office doesn't recycle. Oh, WE recycle, but THEY take our blue bins full of paper and dump them into the bags containing the regular trash. This happens in the evening when everyone has gone home and they can do their dastardly deeds in private (save for the aforementioned someone-in-the-know, who works late). I want to write a note and tape it to the top of my blue bin that says, "Why do you hate America?" Or maybe "God knows when you lie about recycling." Or "Every time you throw away office paper, a kitten dies, screaming." Maybe all three, over a course of a week.

My trip went well. It was wonderful to wear shorts, a tank top, and sandals, and still feel warm. I saw some b-list celebrities, I went on a whole bunch of rides, ate free food and drank a couple of free drinks, walked for miles, swam in a pool, saw a bunch of wild animals... Pretty good for a one-night trip. At the evening reception thingy for all of the media people, I met a guy who recognized me from a first-person article I wrote (and was photographed for) in the old magazine several years ago. I've been waiting to be recognized from that article for years, and finally my dream has come true. I did chat with a few strangers, but it was actually kind of nice. They were all gregarious people who approached me (sitting/standing alone) so that probably had something to do with it. I only talked about the snow with a couple of guys from Boston.

Between that trip, doing a bunch of spring cleaning on Saturday and then dancing at the Steamtrain show, and going on a marathon trip to Ikea yesterday, I feel like now is the time to get back into exercising for reals. I have more house work to do tonight, and then I'll have to keep up the activity some other way. I finally discovered how beautiful and desolate and big the "meadows" are (I think it's the meadows... they're mostly corn fields, though, right? Near the dike? I hope a local can back me up here) when I rode my bike around there last year, and I want to explore those dirt roads more. I would enjoy it more if I had a bike seat that doesn't make my womanly parts "fall asleep". (Was that too much information?)

Ikea was great by the way. We thought we'd just be there a couple of hours but before we knew it almost 4 hours had passed. Oh so much tiredness at the end of it all. As usual, a couple of the things I really wanted were out of stock. Luckily, I found one of the out-of-stock things in the scratch-and-dent section. I still managed to spend $250 ($150 of that was one chair-with-footrest; both Vena Red, beech veneer). I have been reading Apartment Therapy a lot lately, and there are many Ikea devotees there. I saw a bunch of items I recognized from their "smallest, coolest apartment" contest. The commenters on that site would probably say I have too many colors going on in my living room, and they would be right. Perhaps I need some throw pillows that pull together the red Ikea chair, the orange office chair, the blue lamp, and the purple sofa together... Sigh.

I woke up this morning and looked outside, and it was snowing. There was snow coating all of the trees and the bushes and the leafy buds on the trees and the bushes (lots of leafy buds, since it is, after all, April). It made me happy because now I have a good topic of conversation during the press event I'm attending tomorrow. I love to travel on someone else's dime but there's always shmoozing involved. I find that to be hard work. I am a quiet person until I feel like I really know someone, but in these situations I have to be chatty -- at least a little chatty, until I think up a way to escape and go off on my own. This particular event involves riding a new ride, and I really don't want to get stuck riding it with one of my "contacts," because on this ride, screaming will be happening, and that's just kind of strange and icky and too intimate to do with a person with whom you have only a professional relationship.

Anyway, it's very cold out today, and I had to break out the legwarmers (to wear under my jeans) for one last time. Did you know that not only are bubble skirts back in style, but leggings are, too? I can't believe that 80's fashion trends are back. I am going to assume the leggings-with-tunic look is not going to be worn by anyone over, say, age 25; some trends, like the shrug, or fake-vintage t-shirts, don't usually rise up into my age range, probably because people in their 30s like me wore bubble skirts the first time around (and they looked ridiculous back then, too) and have t-shirts that are old and worn-out enough to be genuine vintage. I don't think I ever owned a bubble skirt, but I do still have a pair of leggings I got as a teen from Contempo Casuals (which was very hip in my high school). They're black and have lace trim, and Urban Outfitters is currently selling an exact replica of them. Perhaps this means I can liberate them from underneath my pants! Except I don't want to look like that too-skinny blonde woman on South Street who appears to be in her 40s but dresses like she's 16. Hmmm...

One good thing about this season's fashion for girls/women: The shirts are very forgiving. They're long, and often they're not tight -- in fact, most of them are quite flowy and poofy. You can see what I mean here and here and here.

However, note that the worst trend of 80's fashion has appeared: The geometric graphic. Look at this shirt, and despair.

Another Spring sign: Rich people have taken their convertibles out of the garage and are driving them around town. I've seen two already (both little Jaguars, I think). It's only a matter of time before we see Zeke in his tiny orange car.

A friend just told me a rumor that Smokin' Lil's, the really awesome BBQ place downtown, is closing. I am very unhappy and am currently choosing to be in denial about it. The place is never crowded when I go, even on weekends when there's an hour and a half wait at the neighboring Eastside, so I suppose the writing was on the wall. Lil's is fabulous, though, and I've never gotten a bad meal there. Damn it! If only a few of those Longmeadow/Connecticut people dining at Eastside decided to try Smokin' Lil's instead, this would never have happened.

It's a lovely day. Jill Carroll was released, the weather is gorgeous and warm, everyone is wearing a skirt (if the person is a gal) or a cool shirt (if a fella), and I "had" to recipe-test apple turnovers at work earlier and they were delicious. People are walking down the street eating ice cream cones. Tulips are coming up. Tonight I am going to have to swap my down comforter for my cotton blanket combo. It's all happening, people!

I think someone should put a Dairy Queen or a Carvel in the space where Coldstone used to be, on Main Street. I know, they're just as bad and corporate as Coldstone, and would hurt Herrell's business somewhat. But I am tired of having to hop in a car or bike a long way (long = a mile) just for some soft-serve. I needs my soft-serve in the summer, people. The other weekend it was chilly and rainy, and I went to the mall with a friend and we got some vanilla soft-serve at the brand-new DQ in there. It was a delight. There's a soft-serve shack by the seafood restaurant next to the bike path, and they do that "87 flavors" thing where they somehow add ribbons of colored/flavored syrup to vanilla. I don't recommend anything but the true chocolate and vanilla. The syrup adds even more sugar to the already-sweet-enough vanilla, so it's kind of too intense.

Last night DG asked me where "Oh snap!" came from, as my brother-in-law says it a lot. I said, "um... black people?" but the answer didn't satisfy him. He wanted to know if it was originally from a particular movie or song or something, but I honestly don't know. I mean, where did "doy!" come from? Or "junk in the trunk"? Or "dude!"? Some grad student must have done this research somewhere, right?

I was home sick yesterday, which meant I watched some very, very bad television. I could have watched something of quality on DVD, but I feel guilty if I actually enjoy myself when I've taken a sick day. So it was Maury, who got help for some 13-year-old hoes, and then Springer, which has become even more cartoony than it used to me a few years ago. Springer now has this pole on the side of the stage, and when an audience member says something particularly mean and funny, they're urged to go hang out on the pole, and stripper-dance with it or something. It seems to be a bit of an honor. My mind's a bit hazy on the pole thing, to tell the truth - I was half-awake by that point.

The only other thing of note that happened yesterday was that I got a work email saying that we were soon to have mandatory Diversity Training sessions. I actually thought it might be an April-Fools' Day joke, but no. Apparently my uber-uber-boss has never seen The Office, or she has seen it, but didn't understand that it was a comedy. I am going to have a very hard time taking this seriously. First of all, my office is 95% white; I live in a very white (though very liberal) area of the country. If we had more applicants of color, we would hire them, but we don't. (A similar problem happened when I was at college, and they were desperately trying to find a minority professor for the art department, but got very few minority applicants. They were so hard up that one of the finalists was a white guy who happened to have an amputated foot.) True, some people here may be unaware of their "white privilege" but I bet they're few and far between. Maybe I'm giving people too much credit, I don't know. But I do think that the kind of ingrained racism people here might have wouldn't show itself in the workplace.

I predict the workshop is going to teach me that having input from a diverse group of people will make the organization stronger and more creative. If it turns out I'm correct, can I get that day of my life back?

I know it doesn't feel like spring outside, but I have proof that spring has begun. Go to Trumball Street, near the corner of State Street, and find the dripping tree. There's a huge maple with a broken branch up high, and it's dripping sap onto the grassy median between the sidewalk and the street. I walked past the puddle and thought, that's weird, a puddle and stuff dripping into it, even though there's nothing above but tree. So I turned back and let some of it drip into my hand, tasted it, and hey! Sweet-ish liquid. Nice. Someone should put a bucket out there to catch all the sappy goodness.

Also sweet? Yacht Rock, the current hit show of Channel 101. I love Yacht Rock. I love that it's made by guys who are genuine music nerds (just go to the Channel 101 forums and read the Yacht Rock threads), so while they're making fun of "smooth" music, they also really love it. Because it cannot be denied that "What a Fool Believes" is both cheesy AND an awesome song. If you must know what the show is before viewing it, visit the wiki article. And then go watch some YR. Episode 2 is my favorite but they're all worthwhile.

Things I have been busy doing:

1. Singing. The convention was fantastic. Lots and lots of great singing. My voice gave out eventually. I saw Mr. Tits McGee poking his head in, don't know if Miss Tits was there too. I was one of the coordinators for the event and my task was completed well, with a minimum of problems (though there are always problems). There was a "memorial lesson" on Sunday, and it was led by a couple who had lost a son in the past year. It was very moving and heartbreaking, and after they had read off the list of people in the singing community, as well as their friends and relatives, who had died in the past year, they ended with the name of their son, Mark Seiler. I got chills at the name, as that guy was a part of another obscure "family" of mine, kids who went to Powell House. I had forgotten that I had gotten obituary notices via email by both a Quaker source and a singing source. I never met him, strangely; he was younger than me by just enough that our paths wouldn't have crossed at PoHo. Very sad.

2. Working. Work is very very busy and complicated right now. Not as bad as the fella's, though; he emailed me at 10 this morning to say he was going to sleep, having been up all day and night doing some big technical thing at his job. I could probably remember what exactly he's doing if I worked my brain hard enough, but I'm saving those neurons for work. Worky work-work work.

3. Playing Roller Coaster Tycoon. I have a problem.

4. Feeding Brian's cat, getting my car inspected, going food shopping... Life. You know.

5. Agonizing over, then deciding and buying a new cell phone. I'll miss my 2.5-year-old LG, but I wanted to upgrade to a phone with a camera in it, mainly so I can receive photos on the fly (my sister and bro-in-law like to send me pics). I got very close to buying a Razr, but ended up with a Motorola 815. I need to play around with it some more, but so far I really like it. I got a free month of that stupid-ass V-Cast stuff on all of the ads (the ads that get "My Humps" stuck in my head for hours) but the service isn't even available in my town. So now I gots to remember to call and cancel it, otherwise they'll start charging me for it. Whatta scam.

6. Enjoying the crazy weather. Right now the sun is shining in the middle of a snow squall. A couple of nights ago we had a thunderstorm. The crocuses and snowdrops are blooming.

What are you doing this weekend? During the day, I mean? Besides sleeping, eating, and doing chores? Well, you could come to the Western Mass Sacred Harp Convention! I will even be there at the ungodly (for a Saturday) hour of 8:30 a.m. for an hour-and-a-half stint at the welcoming table. The convention is very amenable to "just stopping by" -- that's how I first got into this whole shape-note singing thing in the first place, I stopped by for a few minutes just to listen. The welcoming table people may try to encourage you to take a book and participate (because it's all about the participating, there's no audience). So if you want to experience the spectacle of 200-300 people singing four-part harmonies at the top of their lungs, and embarrass me a little bit as a side-effect (because singing makes me feel dorky), come on by.

Some advice:

"Passed" and "past" are not the same words. They sound similar, but are not spelled the same way, and do not mean the same thing. At all.

Same goes for "lose" and "loose," which don't even sound the same.

If you are going to be drinking a lot, to the point where you must throw up, please do so in the gutter and not on the sidewalk next to my office building (or the bank, or the clothing store). I really don't enjoy stepping over dried-up, chunky puddles of whatever you ate just before going out for Bud Lites at Tulley's. Plus: Have some fucking dignity.

Perhaps you haven't shopped anywhere other than WalMart, ever, in your entire life. You may be surprised to discover that prices at Target are a few cents higher than what you are used to. This is not a good reason to loudly state your complete shock at how expensive the Lean Cuisine entrees are. Please keep it to yourself and your long-suffering husband.

Homeless (?) lady: As I walk down the street with my boyfriend, don't talk right over our conversation with a request for money; I'm stupid and lose (note word usage) my train of thought easily, and so when you interrupt me I get pissed. Also, when I ignore you and continue talking, it doesn't help your cause to add a "have a lovely evening" after I walk past (note word usage).

Some advice, Oscars section:

Reese Witherspoon: You're cute, and you aren't Renee Zellweger, but still: Shut up.

Salma Hayek: You have an awesome body. Don't let some stupid designer stuff you into a weird boob-bisecting dress ever again.

And finally, Charlize Theron: WTF.

My slackittude has produced a post! I've discovered, via apartment therapy, a way to actually use old flea-market frames. Here's a place online where you can order mats cut to your specifications - both the outer dimensions and the inside window (for the artwork), for a reasonable price. Awesome.

And if you're in need of artwork to frame, visit boygirlparty. I have a tiny painting of susie's, bought at the Giant Robot store in NY. I accidentally linked to her recently -- instead of a previous post like I meant to do -- with the words "creepy naked guy" or something like that (it has been fixed). Which was a mistake I made due to my lame method of html coding, where I copy and paste a link example I have saved on a stickie on my desktop. I've since changed my "example" link from boygirlparty to a fake url. And now you know all my secrets.

Edited to add: Apparently the link never got changed at all, providing boygirlparty with a lot of interesting referral links, I'm sure. D'oh! Stupid Blogger, I KNOW I made the change. Anyway, it's all kosher now, unless Blogger is lying to me once more.

I know I am overdue for a post but I just don't have anything to report. Maybe I'll try writing anyway. Currently, I am sitting on the sofa in front of the TV, my laptop on my actual lap. I bought some pretty boots on Zappos and they're way too narrow, so back they go. My dream boots are yet again but a dream. In other news, my cat is adorable. And it snowed really hard for about 45 minutes today. In addition, oh my GOD this toe nail fungus advertisement should be AGAINST THE LAW! Horrifying! Sorry. I am in front of the TV, half-watching a PrimeTime Live show about a polygamist cult in Colorado. This woman escaped it and now she's going back to confront the life she left behind, where she had 55 siblings (!!!) and ended up marrying a man who already had a wife - one of her sisters. I can't decide if I should keep watching this, or switch over to Animal Cops, which rouses my indignation in a different way, though at least when I watch Animal Cops my cat gets a lot of extra attention.

Animal Cops it is. Oh my god, that dog's coat is so long and matted and filthy it's a wonder he can even move! Poor little guy! So they just shave him and give him back to his clueless owner? What the fuck is that?

Okay, now it is Friday morning. This week has been long and hard, but I was so resigned about it lasting forever that I kind of can't believe it's about to be the weekend. Today I am wearing the nice Anthropologie shirt I got on sale the last time I was down in NYC, even though it's too cold to wear it and I have to cover it up with another shirt.

Do you see? Do you see how boring? Stupid winter, keeping me inside, in front of the TV...

I had something to post that I thought of yesterday, but now I've had a glass and a half of wine and I can't remember anything, except that I had an idea once. Oh! I remembered. I went to the mall yesterday, which has a new Orange Julius/Dairy Queen (excuse me - DQ) combo. I used to love Orange Juliuses when I was a teen, though I was too poor to enjoy them more than a handful of times. I didn't have one yesterday either, but that's not the point here. On the Orange Julius smoothie-making counter is a bin of white powder with a label saying "Flavor Enhancer." Now, if the place served savory food, I'd assume it was MSG (and it was 1965 or something). But it's for sweets, and it's today.
So I went to their corporate website and found this:

Julius Flavor Enhancer, Orange Julius® Compound: A dairy-based flavor enhancer blended for taste and texture.
Ingredients include dairy and egg products, specifically whole milk powder and egg white solids.

...which sounds kind of gross. And sounds like it's more of a texture enhancer than anything. Either way, they clearly need a more appetizing name for it. Judging by the ingredients, they could call it "protein powder" and get away with it. Or how about "Texturator"? "Improviepowder"? "AWESOM-O"? Wait, I know: "Angel Dust"! Perfect.

On my way to work this morning, I walked past what I believe was a genuine, in-the-flesh hobo. Not just a homeless person, but a hobo! He was sitting under the railroad overpass, dressed in bulky camouflage, had a knapsack and a beard, and was playing the same short and fast melody on a harmonica over and over again. I was especially excited to spot a hobo in the flesh since I had just read the 700 Hobo Names in John Hodgman's book a couple of weeks ago. I was too shy to ask him if his presence meant the hoboes were indeed going to overthrow the government.

I'll post something about the big Toy Fest (name changed to avoid google matches) soon. But I had to mention that this Jennifer M post reminded me that I have recently seen creepy nude-photo personals guy in town (unfortunately for me, he lives and works here). And the horrible part is that I think he recognizes me, because there have been smirky looks thrown in my direction. If anything, I should be smirking, since I'm not the one who posted a photo of myself lying face-down on the floor with my ass in the air, or a photo of my chest/abdomen with my pants half-undone. But instead I am embarrassed for him, even though he's clearly too cocky to see that.

I traveled to NYC for the big black-out of 2004, and I traveled to NYC just in time for the biggest blizzard of city history. It's a wonder I was nowhere near the place during 9/11.

The restaurant downtown with the "Your so sweet" sign has actually corrected and replaced it! I am in awe. This never happens! But there it is in the window, "You're so sweet" etc. Exciting.

Note to people who regularly enter mail-in sweepstakes: It really doesn't matter how many stickers you put on your envelope, or how much glitter-glue, or how big the crayon rainbows are — we're just ripping them open and throwing them away. We just keep the index cards you've enclosed — that's why we asked for them. Just FYI.

It's been a week, yes, but I've been away. I went to New York City, and because it's New York City, even the simplest trips are filled with excitement! Well, it's exciting for someone living in a small New England town, at least. Here are some highlights.

First, I visited my sister and brother-in-law for my niece's 2nd birthday party. (btw: Tallulah's blog has finally been updated, see link at right.) My niece was a very cute and charming guest of honor. She knows the whole presents (pezzints!) and singing/candles/cake (cake tyme!) routine and was very excited by the whole thing. Even though she just learned how to distainfully say, "Mommy, stop it" when my sister is singing or doing something she deems silly and unwarranted, she is still at the cutest age ever.

Me and the fella spent the night in a B (a B&B without the Breakfast) within walking distance of their (very nice, but crowded and early-rising) apartment. The room was very comfortable and homey, like staying in a thoughtful friend's guest room, except that a thoughtful friend probably wouldn't charge $140 a night. But I glady paid it.

Sunday was brunch with the family at Moutarde, a frenchy place that has awesome eggs benedict and french toast, and that inspires lots of "don't be so moutarded" jokes. Then the fella left for home and I stayed in Brooklyn. After a short lie-down, me and the sis and the bro-in-law did some errands. People in NY have awesome trash; there are so many pedestrians that you can put anything half-way useable on your stoop railing and know that it will be gone in an hour or two. On my sister's block I found a white Gap skirt that I recognized as part of their summer 05 collection (back when I lived in Manhattan, I often shopped after work to escape the heat), and a halter top by Odille, a brand Anthropologie carries (see previous parenthetical). We were on our way down to Fifth anyway, so I grabbed them and brought them to sell to Beacon's Closet, who gave me $7.50 in credit for the shirt. Score! I also got a nice on-sale shirt for $16 at Brooklyn Industries and they gave me the special free-with-$50-purchase fabric shopping bag. The ringer-upper was a lady so I don't even think she was flirting, unless she was gay, in which case I am extra flattered, but I am guessing she just wasn't paying attention. The point is: I felt lucky.

Later, I got to watch my niece take a crap! (Those with a low tolerance for scat talk might want to skip this paragraph.) Her parents have started introducing the Potty Idea, which involves having her sit on the kiddy potty for a few minutes before her bath. She's pretty into it, and so when she said she wanted to go hang out on the potty, I went with her (she was already nude, since it was pre-bath naked time). She sat for about 20 seconds and then got distracted and walked into the living room, where a turd suddenly began emerging from her butt. My sister grabbed her and rushed her back onto the potty, and my niece seemed a little freaked out at the urgency, but we were all very encouraging and she relaxed. Bro-in-law ran to get the "potty book" to read to her as she sat, and then she requested "nose book, mommy read it?" so he went out again to find the nose book while my sister kept her seated, and he came back with the nose book, saying "you really don't want to go out there and come back in," because, well, there's a reason toilets have water in them, and it has to do with odor control. Anyway, she did poop and pee in the potty, which is a big first, though not knowing when to physically get to the potty is still an issue. She is very young for potty-training, anyway.

Sunday night I stayed at the Soho Grand, the place where my sister rode an elevator with Bjork back when I spent the night there several years ago. The rooms have been redesigned and are more classic/normal now. The heater in my room made a loud, annoying drone, so I turned it off, which unfortunately allowed me to hear the barking of a small dog (the hotel allows pets). At least, I thought it was a dog, until I realized that it was a human, a human lady having loud sex next door. Great. Luckily it didn't last long.

Monday was a training workshop at my old office. The trainer reminded me so much of Cheri Oteri's hyper middle-aged-lady characters that there were times she'd make a joke and I would laugh for all the wrong reasons. On the way home I rode in the back seat of my boss's Honda Element (weird, noisy, not very comfortable, but spacious) and discovered that she will sing along to the radio if she knows the words. And, The end.

It's February 1st! Which means it was two years ago today that my niece was born. I'd point you to her blog link at right, but it hasn't been updated in a very long time. I ordered the kid a set of bongos, because she's got the groove, baby, she's got the motion.* These bongos, which the website says are not a toy but a "real beginner's instrument," should hold up better than the children's bongos I got her for Christmas, which broke on the very first toddler hit.

*Speaking of 80s songs: For the past few weeks, during my morning shower, I have been getting the song "Careless Whispers" stuck in my head. I'm not cheating on anyone, nor is anyone I know (to my knowledge, at least), and I'm not dancing or thinking about dancing, guilty feet or no. It's kind of been driving me crazy, because it's not a good song (seriously, think about it without the kitsch factor. Bad song.) and once it's in my head, it takes a while to get out. Like I'll be walking to work and notice I've started whistling parts of it. This morning I think I might have discovered where "Careless Whispers" has been coming from: the ventilation fan, which has a high-pitched drone that may be the exact note George Michaels hits when he sings, "nooooooow! that you're gooone..". Since I rent, I can't do anything about the fan, but I may be able to do something about the song: I just need to find a less-objectionable song that has that same note as "nooooooow!" in it, and try to steer my brain towards that new song. The trouble is that if I had such a song already imprinted onto my head, it would have popped up already. Damn you, brain, and your perfect memory for top-40 80s pop hits!

Thank you everyone for your offers of sledding companionship - especially sledding-pal Max, who emailed me an hour after I had posted, assuring me that sledding fun could happen with baby and wife (who is also a friend, I don't want to make it sound like she's just some appendage of Max's) with us taking turns holding baby at the top or something. So that's something to look forward to, once it stops raining and starts snowing again. Because it will start snowing again, don't be fooled.

Just now a guy walked out of the law office across the alleyway, grabbed a handful of snow from the sidewalk, looked around sneakily, and walked back inside. I suspect some semi-legal hijinks are about to happen!

Yesterday I saw something I hadn't seen for many years: A destroyed cassette tape, all unspooled and tangled in the weeds by the side of the road. It reminded me of walking by busy, dirty, sidewalk-less roads in New Jersey in the summer.

I have a problem. I want to go sledding, but I only have one sled. My semi-regular sledding partner, Max, has a baby now, a baby too young to safely hold onto while hurtling uncontrolled down a steep snowy hill. And it's hard to invite people to go sledding when it's BYOS. And when you're not, you know, 8 years old. What's a perpetually-adolescent, childless woman-child to do?

Improv Everywhere's No Pants event yesterday ended up with the NYPD stopping the subway train and detaining six members of the pantsless — but it sounds like everyone had a great time anyway. The overzealous police action spurred people to chant "No pants is not a crime!" and, on the way home, sing "99 Pairs of Pants on the Train" (one person commented, "by the mid-80s, I knew we were going all the way"). Read more here.

Aw shizzle (is that old enough to be retro-cool yet?), Kelsey tagged me. Here goes:

Four jobs I've had in my life:
Dunkin Donuts croissanwich/coffee maker/server
banquet server, Somerset New Jersey Marriott
NJ PIRG door-to-door canvasser
magazine editor (just passed my 10-year anniversary. Weird!)

Four movies I could watch over and over:
Lawrence of Arabia
Star Wars
Lost in America
The Jerk

Four places I have lived:
Somerset, NJ
Gramercy Park, New York City, NY
Amherst, Easthampton, and Northampton, MA (really, this should count as one, though there've been multiple addresses.)

Four TV shows I love to watch:
('currently on the air' edition)
Arrested Development
Lost
Project Runway
any and all Law and Orders

Four places I have been on vacation:
I have been very vacation-deprived so far in my life.
London, England
Lake George, NY
Orlando, FL (when I was 11)
All over the U.S. (month-long roadtrip seven years ago)

Four websites I visit daily:
Curbed (got hooked when I was living in NYC, and now I can't stop.)
Gawker (just because)
boingboing (duh)
overcompensating (one of the characters is an ex of mine)

Four of my favorite foods:
sushi, all sorts
lobster
chocolate-chip cookies with walnuts
really good, warm bread and butter

Four places I would rather be right now:
on vacation in Greece
on vacation in Iceland
on vacation in the Galapagos Islands
Here, but without a headache, with my boyfriend, and with better food treats

Four bloggers I am tagging:
(do they all have to have comments? I hope not...)
Avani
my blog-friend Jennifer M.
Tits McGee! (also see her awesome high school diary)
Tallulah, because she turns two soon and should be able to type. That's right, kid - you're on notice.

Improv Everywhere is doing their annual pants-free subway ride this weekend, and if I was in NY, I would definitely participate. Details are at the link; tales of former No-Pants rides are here and here and here. I'm not sure they've ever been so public in their call for participants, so you might end up with a subway car full of nothing but pants-shedding Improv-ers. Which might actually be okay, too.

Alright, fine, whatever. I got just one comment below, even after I asked you all to chime in. It's delurking week, too, did you know that? Not that it matters, to you, and why should it, I guess... No, really, don't worry about it.

(Passive aggression was my minor in college.)

So there's some townie stuff I must address, so if you don't live near me, you might want to skip this post. First: The former Cafe Casablanca, now Fire Cuisine, is open until 3 a.m. on Fridays and Saturdays. This brings the number of late-night eateries in my town back up to one (Jake's gave up at least a year ago). So it's pretty exciting.

Spoleto's has a window display hawking the various Claudio restaurants as perfect Valentine's dinner locations. And one of the signs uses "your" for "you're." This is a freakin' college town, people! You've got to bring your A-game here. I happen to know that a friend's ex-girlfriend works there, and she is (according to him) a freakin' genius, so she's failing in her moral duty as a smartie-pants grad student by not correcting this sign immediately.

The old, dirty, icy snow has been melting rapidly, which is nice, except that it's exposing a ton of wet garbage, which is not. It must have snowed like the day after New Year's because I'm seeing a lot of silvery streamers and bits of confetti. And, as usual, lots and lots and lots of cigarette butts.

Yet another Asian restaurant is about to open, called Zen. It's been about-to-open for weeks now, though. Like Tofu, this one may be another slow train wreck about to happen. Or it could be a Silk Road Cafe. Who can say?

The Iron Horse's dinner menu spells avocado "avacado." Plus they say their chicken salad is "straight from New York's famous 2nd Ave Deli." So they've got some corrections to make.

I have a problem. If my significant other doesn't like something that I really like to do, I then feel compelled to do it. For example: Imitating the noise that his radar detector makes every time he starts his car. Or: blowing raspberries (a.k.a. zerberts) on him. I am told "stop, for I actually kind of hate that" and the switch in my mind is thrown to "you must continue doing this behavior - in fact, step it up!" This has caused some tension in my relationships, to say the least. It's especially hard being with someone who has definite pet peeves. But they wouldn't be called pet peeves if you weren't supposed to pet them, right? (Sorry, I think I channeled Jean Teasdale for a moment there.) Seriously, it's a compulsion, one that I actually have to work at to control. I stopped doing the car noise thing, and the zerbert edict was just laid down a few days ago, but I think I'm making progress in controlling myself. It's just so hard to go from hanging out with my niece, who loves getting them, and then back to the other cute and affectionate person in my life, who hates them. Talk about receiving mixed messages.

Am I the only one with this problem? (Not the zerbert thing in particular, although if you have that exact same problem, then we should probably hang out.) Comments, please.

Chalk on the side of the Sweeties building this morning read:

SEX
are ye matey
I want your booty
free coffee (with an arrow pointing to a ledge with a Dunkin Donuts coffee cup on it)

At work we are finally upgrading to the newest OS, which means lots of problems but ultimately some goodness. We have a training session tomorrow that's scheduled during lunch (12:30-2:30), but we were told that not only was lunch not being provided but we shouldn't bring any lunch in to eat during it. The whole thing reminds me of having my "lunch" time being assigned at random every year in elementary school and how much that sucked ass. Back then I had the metabolism of a rabbit and would end up nearly fainting from hunger around 1:00 since my lunch had been at 10:45 or whatever. My god, public school SUCKS. I know it's a cliche, but it's true: The whole 12-year process exists in order to produce children ready-made for the unnatural-ness of corporate life.

Anyway. On Saturday I drove to Laconia to visit my 88-year-old grandmother. It was a three hour drive, and it flew by due to the five Ricky Gervais Show podcasts I had downloaded. There were a few times I was laughing so hard while I was driving that I feared for my safety. I am serious. He's doing a series of 12. I got them via itunes, which might be the easiest way to get them (and not through the link above).

My grandmother is fine. She was very pleased to see me and the rest of the family, and proud to show us off at the "supper" at her nursing home dining room. The food was, well, made for 88-year-olds, which is strikingly similar to airplane food (back when there was such a thing as airplane food...). My niece is in a magical developmental stage where she's funny and cheerful and always exploring and doing odd things with serious determination like rearranging the boxes of pasta in the pantry. During breakfast I drew her a picture on her mini magna-doodle, and she named it correctly as a house and a tree. Then my mom noticed that my tree didn't have a Trauma Hole* (which is good, since it means I don't have hidden trauma) but my house didn't have a chimney (which is bad, since it means I have no release for my anger). I told her I was trying to make the house look like a brownstone, where my niece lives and which has no chimney, but then I was told by my brother-in-law that their building does have a chimney, so I threw my coffee cup against the wall and told them to go fuck themselves.

*The trauma hole is the hole that I'd wager 99% of children put in the trunk of their trees, since that's how kids learn how to draw them; maybe there have been a bunch of traumatized adults teaching generations of kids how to draw, I don't know. I remember often drawing little squirrels peeking out of my tree-holes, and apparently that's a sign I am managing my trauma, or that someone is protecting me, or something. I just thought it looked cute, but clearly I'm not a trained professional.

Is it just me, or does everyone seem kind of down lately? The holidays are over (well, they will be for me after this weekend) so hopefully people will start feeling better soon. Either now or later when spring comes and change is in the air.

I have been doing things in my spare time, things like playing at one of the free tables at an online poker site, and knitting a scarf, and watching TV, and sometimes all three of those things at once. It's all very sofa-oriented. I bought myself a popover pan because I love popovers and have been making do with a ridiculously shallow old aluminum muffin tin. And I also did a fair amount of work on a quilt I started last spring. So yay for me, there.

There's not much to say, really. Things will pick up eventually. This weekend should provide some kind of fodder...

My holidays were fine, if a little short. I like it better when Christmas falls on a Friday or a Monday, so you have an excuse to create a four-day weekend out of it. My little niece is cuter than ever. I feel like I have an unrequited crush on her. She breaks my heart regularly: Often, if I offer to pick her up or get a hug from her, she’ll consider the request for a second and then say, “no” and turn to something else. It’s not that she doesn’t love me, she just loves her mom, her dad, her grandma and poppa so much more. They see her a lot more than I do. In a few months I will start my secret campaign to turn her against all of them.

Two holiday anecdotes:

1. My mom is a psychologist or a psychotherapist (I don’t actually know the difference… shh!!) and one of her patients bakes her many cookies for the holidays. This year she baked more cookies than ever – dozens and dozens of like five or six different kinds. This kind of largesse is confusing for us people who take an entire afternoon just to produce a couple of sheets of Toll House. Mom implied that her patient didn’t really have any family that was worth doing all of that cookie-baking for, which started this exchange (extremely paraphrased):

Me: So, did she decide she shouldn’t bake cookies for her family this year, or did you “help” her decide?
Sc: Did you tell her, “You know, your family doesn’t really deserve your cookies. They don’t understand you. Better to give them to people in your life who help you.”
Me: “They’re probably really ungrateful too, never thanking you for your kind and loving cookie-baking gestures.”
Sc: … “By the way, thank you for the cookies.”

2. I gave my niece a small My Little Pony named “Hula Lula” several months ago, and Hula L. had come along to my parents’ house for the holidays. My sister has given Hula Lula a kind of trashy-sounding southern belle voice, because “she looks southern.” (I guess it’s the blue eyeshadow on the half-lidded eyes, and the long and lustrous purple hair? Apparently women in the south are all painted-up whores.) Anyway, the Hula Lula voice is best when my brother-in-law does it, because for some reason his version of the voice speaks extra slowly, as though Hula Lula just woke up and it’s 4:00 in the afternoon and she’s got dried vomit in her hair. Things like “yer real pritty” and “can ah sit awn yer knee?” sound even creepier than they would normally. I thought she should say, “honey, have you seen mah cigarettes?” and “where’s Pony’s medicine?” but he didn’t follow along.

Walking home from work today, all bundled up with my scarf wrapped around my face, I passed two guys dressed in construction-worker-type clothes (dirty jeans, sweatshirts, Carhardt jackets, beer bellies). As they passed, one of them said, "It's not THAT cold!" in a snotty, almost angry tone. I waited until I was 20 feet away before saying, "Bitch."

What those guys did not understand is that I have a nose problem. A nose-skin problem, really: Rosacea (must be said in loud, screechy old-lady voice). I already don't limit my caffeine intake or stay away from spicy foods, so I try to at least keep my nose out of the freezing cold air. My nose is bright red for the majority of my life, but it gets much redder out in the cold, which can't be good for its long-term health. I really don't want to turn into the guy at the Rt. 47 flea market with the bulbous plum nose who looks like a purple elephant seal. And unfortunately, I'm not brave enough to wear one of these. So scarf held up to my face is what it's gotta be.

If I could have explained all of that to Judgey McFatpants in a split second, I would have. The bitch.

Ads We Like and Why We Like Them:*

The one where the guy is humming the tune to "Karma Chameleon" and tries to convince his friend it's actually "Where tha Hood At?" Best part: the guy singing "Where's the hood?" to the tune of the "she comes and goes" part of the song.

The one where the guy is all psyched he ordered some cheap-ass pizza and saved money, so he tells his kids to turn on the light, and they cheer. Best part: After three seconds, he tells them, "Okay, lamp time's over," and the kids are all bummed out.

The one where the guy has a couple of voodoo dolls for cell phone charges or something, and once his co-worker tells him he won't need them anymore because there's a way-better cell phone plan out there for him, he says (Best part:) "Now I'm gonna make one for lonliness!"

All other ads suck. Yes, every one. But especially:

Any of the boring, boring, oh-my-god-so-mind-bendingly boring ones for Vehix or Carfax or whatever the fuck, where the entire 30 seconds is just watching a guy look at a car. Worst part: How frequently they play these ads.

The locally-produced (or just incredibly poorly-done) ads for fitness video hawker and generally creepy-looking John Basedow. Why do I know his name? Why, it's because of the catchy jingle they play, that sounds like it was recorded on some kid's Hello Kitty boombox:
Here's John Basedow!
He's gonna show you how
To reach your potential!

There's more but I am usually moaning in horror too loudly to hear it. Worst part: The stupid workouts they're selling are on video only. That shit is so 15 years ago.

Special radio station shout-out to the ad for a WAMC station benefit show starring some female folkie. The ad has been playing several times each morning for several months, I'm guessing. It starts with a line from one of the chick's songs, and it goes, "Summer's almost over, and I'm crying but I don't know why." I know this ad has been on forever because I'm pretty sure it was actually late summer when they first aired it. Worst part: The line is sung in such a weird way, it's hard to resist singing along mockingly, which then means I get the thing stuck in my head.


*Subtitled: I watch way too much television.

It's snowing. Huh.

Chowflap reader Jennifer pointed this to me: The morning news mentioned a WFMU show, now available for a listen online, that played three hours of music recorded at the 2002 Sacred Harp convention in Northampton. I wasn't there, but that is my posse. Neat-o.

So it seems that if I log into blogger via the comments section, then I can get onto the rest of blogger while I'm at work. Thus the blogging currently happening right now. I feel a lot better today. The virus is on notice and hastily packing its luggage. Plus, it didn't snow, and is actually kind of nice and sunny outside.

I live in a small New England town (officially a city, I guess, but it doesn't look like one) and my walk to work is about five blocks, three of which are in a residential area. Yet every day at least one panhandler asks me for money. One guy is always sitting under the railroad bridge on my way home, but today a different one asked me for a quarter for some coffee this morning, so I know there will be at least two spare-change opportunities today. I have to admit that I never give them anything. Is that bad? I am just convinced, like the worst kind of person, that they aren't going to spend the money on food or coffee or anything but booze or drugs. Frankly it's kind of hard to not think that when they're so often drunk while asking me for money. I don't know why our small town has such a large homeless population. The local state-run mental hospital was deregulated (nice term for "shut down and abandoned") more than twenty years ago, so it seems kind of unlikely all of these people are former residents. I've been assuming they're here because our town is full of generous and kind-hearted people who provide shelter and food for them. Which is nice. Go, us. But doesn't make me want to give them money. There have been days when I've had to stop myself from snarling, "Nope, I'm going to hold on to this money that I EARNED AT A JOB THAT SUCKS THE LIFE OUT OF MY VERY SOUL."* (It's especially difficult to not say that kind of thing to the "homeless" teens.) Not very liberal of me, I know. I am generous in other ways, I swear it.

I did laundry last night. I enjoy the readings of the flyers at the laundromats. It gives one a sense of what one's town is all about. My favorite one yesterday went something like this (going from memory, here): "Looking for housemate/ housing share for a vegan, non-toxic household (no TV or microwave). I'm a 22-year old part-time student who likes cooking, dancing, cats, reading, and playing a friend-made flute! I am joyous, easy-going, and clear [yes, she definitely said "clear"]. I love to PLAY!!" In college, people like that are what made me strip all hippie traces away that I had left from my Quakerly childhood.

In sum, I am an ornery bastard. Who loves to PLAY!!



* That's not even true; my job is pretty great, all things considered, but it's still work, and not always fun.

I've been sick. It's true. I am not one of those people who go through a cold in two days. My viruses linger for a week or more. They move in and unpack their bags. Their toiletry cases have regular-size tubes of toothpaste and bottles of shampoo. They're bold.

I am going to make a concerted effort to write more in here, even though putting up the facade of "look at how funny and clever I am, and how I can find humor in everything I see" is very difficult right now, and I can't write about what I'm really feeling because too many members of my family read this. (Depression comes along for the ride with the being sick for a long time. It's the circle of life.)

Wow! I just got an email meant for this person (note: NOT ME). Our names are identical, down to the middle initial! Plus: the email had to do with a stock repurchase. Not just any stock repurchase, but the purchase of a stock relating to a person who was much in the news this past year for some stock-purchasing-and-selling troubles of her own. Maybe this person's email mistake will cause me to be swept unawares into a web of mystery and shady financial shenanigans!


I'll keep you posted.

Not being able to blog from work has really cramped my style. Like, today out in the parking lot I saw a guy wearing a Cosby sweater whose torso was completely square. And I almost forgot about it, but, you know, I remembered it, which is how you just read about it. And then at home I have all these Slegs to kill, so you see how little free time I have.

For the first time ever in my life, today I bought the local paper just so I could officially get a bag for Bag Day on Saturday (the one day of the year when almost every store downtown offers 20% off of any one thing in each store) instead of finding a store willing to give me a bag. The past few years I've been avoiding downtown completely on Bag Day, but there's one item I need to buy for my dad's birthday next week, and it would be dumb to buy it NOT on bag day. So I am going to have to brave the slow-moving, Coldstone-Creamery-eating, jay-walking, preschooler-and-senior-citizen-towing crowds. For Father.

Here's a little Friday link-a-palooza: animal edition.

Silly Sleeping (cat) Pose Olympics!

Cat Sounds!

Animals have problems, too!

Beautiful photos of a dog in mid-air frisbee-catch!

Hello? *tap tap* Anyone here?

Anyway. There's a screen shot from Katamari Damacy on page 14 of this week's EW. Is it bad that I know exactly what level it's from, the prize the Prince is wearing, and the name of the cousin the Prince has just rolled up?

Also: I had a flash of image-memory yesterday of a small spiral-bound notepad I had when I was a kid, with Snoopy on the cover in a leisure suit saying, "I've got Disco fever, babe!" For whatever reason, my sister and I would read that aloud every time we saw the thing. My sister pronounced it "babY" and I pronounced it correctly and after a couple of years we had a discussion about the correct pronunciation. And now that notepad would go for $4 if it was as-new in some hipster store in the East Village.

The sign outside of Friendly's in Florence says:

FREE HAPPY ENDING
WITH OUR COMFORTS OF HOME MEAL


Shhh! Nobody tell them! Hee hee hee hee.

I know this will seem obvious, but it case you didn't know, or (like me) remember: KFC is terrible. KFC should not legally be able to call what they sell "food": maybe "phood," or "fud," or even "a food-related experience."

The only reason I tried KFC again was the memory of an awesome wing. About 10-15 years ago I tasted a deliciously sweet and salty thing from KFC. It was unbreaded and succulent and had the sauce baked into it, giving the wing a deep red-brown color. I thought it was what they now call "Honey BBQ Wings," so I ordered a six-piecer yesterday. I knew I was in trouble when they put a plate on my tray with eight golf-ball-sized gnarled lumps coated with uncooked "bbq sauce." Apparently they just put the nuggets into a bath of the "sauce" right before serving. And since the "sauce" is about 80% high-fructose corn syrup, it coats the nubbins quite thickly, so the sauce-to-meat ratio is way out of whack. I took one bite and had to spit it out into a napkin. Not only was the sauce disgusting — thick, sticky sugar syrup laced with liquid smoke, caramel coloring, and some salt — but under the sauce was fried breading, and under the breading was fried wing skin, and under the wing skin was a tiny piece of meat (on the bone, so you know it's real) that had been impregnated with artificial chickeny flavor and more salt. Unfortunately, I was hungry, so I gruesomely eviscerated three of the nuggets to get to a few small bites of meat. Of course I couldn't do it without coating my hands in the "sauce" which I sure as hell wasn't licking off my fingers. I did eat a biscuit, a chicken strip (dipped in ranch sauce — its first ingredient was water, which seemed more benign), and some cole slaw, so it wasn't a total loss.

Today I'm in detox, eating stuff like brown rice and root vegetables to make up for my diet this weekend. I was in P-Town for one night, which was very cold and rainy but then very nice, and I ate no vegetables while I was there (save the potatoes in my clam chowder and the iceberg lettuce on my lobster roll). Of course since I am eating so healthily today, it means I can also eat some halloween candy (and a cookie, and a doughnut hole, etc) to keep the toxin levels even.

Did you know? Faces gives you 10% the price of any umbrella if it is raining when you buy it.

Did you know? You can re-use oil for frying once (using it a total of two times) before it becomes kind of worn-out, chemically.

Did you know? The spiced creme brulee tastes just like egg nog. Egg nog and winning and God smiling upon you.

Did you know? Toddlers love ponies and riding and crackers, but they really, really, really love their mommies. Especially when it turns out they're suffering from roseola.

Something bad has happened.


I can no longer post from work.


I don't know why, but with the move, I have lost the ability to have cookies, or something, which makes no sense, because sites like the NY Times remembers my sign-in info from day to day. So, yeah. Maybe it's blogger-specific. Maybe they're onto me! Yikes.


What else? Oh, it rained a lot, for like ten days. Today it got sunny, very sunny, and for the first time our office was blasted with sunlight, making me search the storage boxes in the basement for a piece of yarn (and I found some), with which I hung my five-dollar pashmina as a curtain. But that wasn't enough, so I scrounged a large cardboard box that blocks the window nicely, although it's a bit tenementy. The building owner was supposed to supply shades before we moved in, but since real estate transactions never ever work out properly, there are no shades and no ETA for the shades.

On Saturday morning I drove to an estate sale in the pouring pouring rain. It was a very crappy little house a few feet from a busy road. An old Polish Catholic lady had lived there. She had an interesting living room set but I wasn't in the market for any furniture. It was the kind of estate sale that I love, where an entire household is for sale, so you are free to open drawers and pull stuff open and make an offer. (While I was in the kitchen a woman asked about the half-empty bottles of alcohol - not great stuff, mind you, as one was Manichewitz - and the estate sales guy said she could have them for free. She happily took them all.) Like many women of a certain age and class, the late woman was a sewer. She had a lot of bad, boring fabric, and like I've seen at other, similar sales, she had a curiously large number of zippers. But she also had some sewing pattern catalogs from the 60s-70s which I snatched right up. I dusted off the ol' scanner to share some choice shots with you. Enjoy!

I have a new office location, one that makes me the Eye on the Armory Street Parking Lot (as well as Armory Street itself). Armory Street is barely a street, yet gets a lot more traffic than I had imagined. I also never before noticed that the Thornes building has a roof seemingly composed entirely of pigeons.

Also seen today: a vet begging with the aid of a life-sized Halloween novelty head and torso. Well, it was more of a half-torso. It was holding a bowl and when someone walked near it would say something like "come closer, don't be shy" in a "spooky" voice. The vet was sitting calmly next to it with his cane and cardboard sign. After I passed him I overheard someone saying they had seen him outside of the VA hostpital over in Leeds, hitchhiking with the torso. More as this story develops!

p.s. I put up some photos in my new gallery (thanks, DG!): four from the amazing benefit show and dinner at the Apollo Grill Sunday night, and an incomplete gallery of photos from my summer in NYC. Check it out here.

See last post for an update on the car fire, of which there are a couple of photos here, in my spankin' new gallery.

This morning at 6:30 a.m. I awoke to D saying "Do you smell that?" Never a good way to wake up. I sniffed and said yeah, what is that? I instantly thought that I must have left the toaster oven on or something. Then I noticed orange, flickering light reflected on the ceiling. We zipped the shades up and lo and behold, on the street right out front of my apartment, a big old white Jeep's engine was on fire; not just smoking or something, but on fire, in a big and unquestionable way. And it was parked right behind D's fancy car. We called 911, but they were already on it. D ran into the cops outside and they let him move his car, "if you hurry." He hurried. The cops sprayed the flames with their little tiny extinguishers but the fire just seemed to enjoy the attention and didn't get any smaller. The extinguishers made a big billow of white smoke/steam waft up to my open bedroom window and I was awake enough to close them before the cloud got inside. Then a fire engine showed up, and they hooked up a hose and sprayed the crap out of the car, but it still kept on relighting! Man. Finally they broke out the foam stuff, and that did the trick, though they had to whack the shit out of the front hood with a prybar in order to get it open so that they could really douse it.

By the time it was all over, the front half of the car was completely destroyed, and there was a very large white foamy puddle with small pieces of burnt car sitting in it. The woman who owned the car came out in her robe and be-towel-ed hair and said that earlier she had heard someone trying to steal her car, trying to get it to start. And I guess the car didn't turn over, but it got so hot that the dirty, oily engine caught fire. There are several key details missing in that story, though, and it's fairly unsatisfying.

UPDATE! I checked the local paper the next day and there was a little thing about the fire in the police blotter. They say it was most likely an electrical fire, and no foul play is suspected. So the whole thing about the owner hearing someone try to start her car was bullshit, apparently.

Some randomness:

I made a big mistake at work, and though the mistake was solely a result of my supervisor not informing me of something I should have been paying attention to, I still hate myself for not magically discovering what to do by myself.

A little tip: Have the Quiznobots put your sandwich through the toaster twice, so that it actually becomes toasted.

Bob Loblaw is the best character name ever, and makes me giggle a lot. "Don't talk nonsense to Bob Loblaw!" Hee hee heeee.

There's a level in the new Katamari Damacy game where your katamari is a ball of fire, and if you don't pick anything up for several seconds, your fire goes out. It is hard.

In related news, my sister has been mugging whores for money in her spare time. She says it makes her feel kinda bad, but that the hookers have the most cash on them, so what can you do? (By the way, if you want to watch a movie version of Vice City, go see Transporter 2. I think some of the scenes were just captured video from some guy's Playstation.)

Actually, I'd rather not click to "find out more about Britney's new scent," thanks.

The air conditioning in the temporary office was broken but now is fixed. I am working with the rest of the staff in a large, open conference room (with 14-foot ceilings, give or take a foot) until our permanent office is finished. Even when the loud air blower isn't on, I can feel the frigid air drifting down from the verts and settling on my body like a blanket of snow. This means that I have to wrap myself up like a poor peasant girl with my $5 pashmina I bought on the street in NY (thank you, shady pashmina vendors!!). And even then I almost have to break out my fingerless gloves.

Even though this big room is in a nice old building, the windows have thoughtfully been sealed shut with caulk and paint. So even though the temperature outside is perfect, we aren't allowed to experience any of it.

New topic: As if one needed an excuse to go to the Holyoke Mall, tonight at 7 Lord Russ is singing. At the Mall. Just like a Tiffany, or a Debbie Gibson. Or an off-season carny dressed as Santa. It will be glorious. So you should show up, unless you are below the age of 18, in which case you need to convince your parent to accompany you and make sure you don't frighten the other patrons with your loitering and your loud laughter and your disturbing youthfulness and your confusing clothing.

New topic: It was so lovely out after work yesterday that I extended my bike ride home, gliding right past my house and over to the dyke and then way over to the fairgrounds and the airport. And then I probably should have turned around, but instead I took a right, figuring eventually I'd wind my way back under Rt. 91 and to my neighborhood, which I did, except it took 30 minutes instead of 10. It was wonderful, though, even with my out-of-shapeness and lack of water. I missed doing this all summer long (that whole Manhattan thing - did that really happen? How strange!) and I had forgotten how much I love riding all alone on washboarded dirt roads through farmland, in and out of sudden patches of cold air and the smell of fertile ground and sweetly rotting leaves. The sky was beautiful, all big and colorful and cloud-studded. At times it got a little "Children of the Corn," since all I could hear was rustling corn stalks in the fields surrounding me, plus I had no real idea where I was going. For a long time there it looked like I'd end up at the river unless I made a u-turn, but then I found a more serious-looking road heading back in the direction I wanted. That lead me out of the fields and back up onto the dyke a block from where I started and two blocks from home.

Work is slow today. Can't you tell?

Tofu, one of the restaurants that opened in the Sushi Glut of Early 2005, has closed. They helpfully put signs in all of their windows that say "Sorry, We Closed." I hate to admit that when I first read them, I thought they had accidentally left the "are" off of the sign. Even now, just for fun, I kind of say it the wrong way in my head as I pass. It doesn't give me the same kind of joy as "They taste like real meats, but consist no meats at all!!!" but it'll do for now.

It's Sept. 21 and supposed to get into the 80s again today. It feels wrong to be wearing flip-flops on the day before fall. Speaking of flip-flops, there was a local radio ad on the air a few months ago in which a woman and a man are talking about summer fun or something, and she makes fun of him for saying "flip-flops" (as in, "oh, are you going to wear your "flip-flops"?? all snotty-voiced) and he acts all abashed about it like he knows he's being an idiot for calling them that. What the fuck? THEY ARE CALLED FLIP-FLOPS. Everyone calls them that! I didn't ever hear them referred to as "thongs" until a few years ago, and calling them thongs sounds completely retarded. In fact, I would totally make fun of someone who called flip-flops "thongs." Before hearing that ad, I had no idea that using the term flip-flops meant I was juvenile, or whatever it was that the woman was trying to imply. I can't remember what the ad was for, sadly, but every time I heard it I vowed to never spend a dime in their business (though I am fairly sure the place wasn't one I was in danger of frequenting anyway).

I blame Kelsey for linking to nordstroms, but man oh man do I want these. These are almost right, and cheaper (but not what I'd call cheap).

Man, it is weird to sum up your post-college life in one short-ish email. I guess it would be more difficult if I had lived in a bunch of places and had a bunch of different jobs. My relationship history makes up for that, though. There's no easy summary for that aspect of my life like "I got married in '97 and we have two kids." I didn't include shorter, smaller things like my 5-week cross-country road trip I took in 1999 PB (pre-blogging), although I could have.

(By the way, when is it too early to spring the photo albums on the new guy? One month? Four? Forever? He's bad at being an "active listener," so maybe never. Seriously, throw in an "uh huh" every minute or so, that's all I ask.)

I've got a bad case of the Mondays! Ha! Ha!

No, seriously. My doctor thinks I may need surgery.

Work is kicking my ass. I really shouldn't complain, as I just spent a couple of hours putting together a lion made out of Legos. But still. I am unmotivated to the extreme. When should I finally decide to call it a day, and live the life of a pauper artist? I mean, I roll my eyes at those who refuse to "work for the man" (because it's so much more noble to work for peanuts, and to not have health insurance), but I still wish I wasn't, well, working for the man. Not because of any political or pseudo-wannabe-bohemian stance but because I would be so much happier if I was actually spending 40-hours-plus a week doing things I like to do. I could probably come up with a couple of money-making schemes, and go into business for myself. However, I have an inherent laziness and tendency to not follow projects through to the end (see: Art-o-mat blocks, still unfinished and unsent; see: www.chowflap.com; see: strip quilt project, on hold until it gets colder out; see: Fellowship of the Ring book, abandoned halfway through). I have completed many things, though, so I am trying not to get all defeatist on my ass.

You know what's really fun? Riding a Jet-Ski.

I have to confess something to you, dear reader - before this weekend, I would have said that the kind of people who ride around on noisy Jet-Skis in a pristine natural environment were not my kind of people. But lo and behold, at this late date, I have discovered that I am that kind of people. In fact, I am maybe a little angry that I have lived this long without the Jet-Ski experience. My parents must take most of the blame for this.

I also went to Burlington and shopped fruitlessly for my imaginary dream boots. Yes, these are similar to the imaginary dream boots I have been looking for for several years. I still haven't found them, though I kind of like these and these. I am a freak, I know.

Speaking of freaking, I was gifted with a PS2 a couple of days ago. I feel guilty in advance of the wasted hours, but it's hard to feel too bad about anything when I'm in the middle of rolling up an awesome katamari, or carjacking some jerk's red Ferrari.

It was my birthday yesterday, and by leveraging my brand I was able to be in NY for it while also getting a free hotel room. (Of course I worked two semi-full days there to make it happen, but still.) More evidence that my sister and I are twins: We both love the new Giant Robot store in the East Village, and so I went there a couple of weeks ago to do some birthday shopping for my sister. They are having a really great illustration show, and one of the artists does these small paintings on what appear to be wood laminate samples. There were about 40 or 50 of them all hung in a grid, and gthey were each about $40, so I looked for one I might wanna buy as a gift. A bunch were sold already, though (marked with a red dot), including a few of my favorite ones, like the one with the birds in a leafy tree, and a cat so curled up its head has gotten upside-down. So I didn't buy any, and instead I bought her a cool shirt. Fast forward to my birthday, and of course my sister has bought me one of the tiny paintings, and not only that, but she's bought me the one with the upside-down cat in it. Amazing, no?

No?

Tonight on my drive back from the New Haven train station I was behind a minivan from New Jersey with one of those DVD playing screens mounted inside in such a way that it is highly visable to other drivers on the road. I cannot help myself when I see those things - I have to follow along and try to figure out what movie they're watching, traffic laws and concern for public safety be damned! Luckily for everyone, this one was easy: It was the original Willy Wonka, and it was the scene right after Charlie finds the ticket and the evil Mr. Slugworth waylays him as he's running home, and for a good minute Mr. S's face fills the screen as he tells Charlie to steal him a gobstopper. Awesome.