No Fanatic Like a Convert

Joe: I have to go on a business trip to New York next week, and I'll be away for Melissa's and my anniversary.
Me: Really? You should go to Chipotle.

Dave: My friend Chris wants to go see that Bodies exhibit in the city this weekend, but eh, I don't know.
Me: Really? You should go to Chipotle.

Boss: I'm going to need that report from you by Wednesday.
Me: Really? You should go to Chipotle.

Because Now I'm So Lazy That I Just Blog Conversations

Mark: Do you ever think about going to medical school?
Me: What? No.
Mark: Oh, okay.
Me: Well. Maybe once or twice.
Mark: I knew it.
Me: I have to remember that it's not like Scrubs.
[I should mention that we're on my couch watching a Scrubs marathon.]
Mark: Or Grey's Anatomy.
Me: It's not like Grey's Anatomy? Forget it then.
Mark: Maybe it's a little like Grey's Anatomy.
Me: It's funny, actually, I was just talking to Melissa about wanting to be a doctor. Then two seconds later I missed my stop on the train.
Mark: Ha.
Me: But I was saying that I think I'm only interested because I could wear scrubs to work.
Mark: Yeah, really.
Me: No, really. That might be the deciding factor.
Mark: [looks at me]
Me: They're like pajamas! That you can wear all day!

My Titanic Computer Game Was Called the Computer Game of Dreams. And It Was. It Really Was.

Me: Do you remember in college when Jared and I were obsessed with that Titanic game for an entire weekend?
Dave: Uh, yeah.
Me: That was the best weekend!
[pause]
Me: I'm pretty sad.
Dave: What was the deal with that game again?
Me: Oh, it was SO COOL. It was called Titanic: Adventure Out of Time.
Dave: Oh boy.
Me: So you're on the Titanic but you're an FBI agent, and you run around talking to people and finding stuff, and basically you have to save the world.
Dave: Okay.
Me: And if you do everything right, you can prevent World War II.
Dave: What happened to World War I?
Me: Oh. Okay, you could prevent World War I. And Hitler.
Dave: You stopped Hitler, too?
Me: Yup. And sometimes you could go to the restaurant and steal food off the bad guys' plates.
Dave: You're saving the world and they can't get you a free meal on the ship? You're a crimefighting hobo.
Me: I still have the game, you know.
Dave: Yeah, and it's, what, ten years old? I bet the technology is astounding.
Me: I think I'm going to call in sick to work tomorrow and play it all day.
Dave: You're going to call in sick two Fridays in a row?
Me: You just ruin everything.

And I Couldn't Help But Wonder: When It Comes to the Men in New York, Does the Big Apple Fall Far From the Tree?

Dave and I were watching the tourist channel in my room at the cleverly named New Yorker, which is basically a Holiday Inn on a prime piece of real estate. Whatever city you're in, the tourist channel turns it into Disney World: San Francisco is one endless cable car ride, Boston is a beeah at Cheeahs, and I'm sure that Seattle is "brewing up something special for your trip!" Regardless of where you are, all these channels agree on one thing: You, my friend, are on the epicenter of a bustling metropolis with SO MUCH to DO! Culture AND restaurants! No, really, you can learn AND eat!

In this case we were hearing about their Sex and the City tour, which New Yorkers like to go on at the end of a hard day on Wall Street, presumably before doing a choreographed street dance with Annie and Daddy Warbucks.

Me: I wish there was a real Sex and the City tour.
Dave: Oh, yeah. They take you around the city and then make you go down on a UPS guy.
Me: Then they have transvestite prostitues throw eggs at you in the middle of the night.
Dave: You'd have to work in a lot of puns.
Me: And you'd have to have screaming fights with each other in the middle of the street for no good reason.
Dave: Oh, right, what episode did that happen in, again?
Me: I'd go on that tour.
Dave: Who wouldn't?

My Weekend in New York, or If I Remember Correctly, I Think I May Have Serenaded Darren with "Faithfully" by Journey Within An Hour of Meeting Him

Did I tell you guys that this trip that my dad and I took was actually a bus tour? Or, no, not a bus tour. I'm not the Grateful Dead. What's the word I'm looking for? It was one of those travel club trips on a chartered bus. Yeah. That sounds a little bit less like a roof seat on a red sightseeing bus, right?

Honestly, I didn't think it would be corny at all. I didn't even think about it. As far as I was concerned, it was a reasonably priced opportunity for my dad and I to have the baseball weekend in New York that we've wanted to have for years... just a four-hour ride to and from the hotel and tickets to the games. And that's what it was, but at the same time... ha, all of a sudden I'm realizing that I'm writing this much more dramatically than I intended to: "And it was... it really was... until everything went horribly wrong..."

It started when we met up to catch the bus on Friday morning. Instead of it just being a group of people taking a bus to the same destination, it became like summer camp. It didn't help that I was the only one under fifty years old. There was a guy from the company who organized the trip (let's call him John) who came with us. He was probably a couple years younger than me and just the quintessential Boston guy. There's a million others around here just like him who tell stories like how they were "out the othah night with my buddies Matty and Sully and we weh sayin' that yeah Willy Mo's a wicked powah hittah but at the same time it's like, you know..." (And yes I'm painfully aware that I rock "wicked" and "like" a bit excessively myself.) If he'd only had scraggly hair, he would've had to play for the Sox himself or be Jim's new pal on The Office. He was nice enough, but damn if I didn't want to kick him in the neck by the end of the weekend. By the end of the first day, actually.

John walked that fine line between trying to entertain senior citizens and being a little bit too condescending. He'd get on his bus microphone (that's right) and give us itinerary information (ugh, and it was always crap like, "Okay, gang! Bathroom break, let's all meet back here in twenty minutes!") and then ask if anyone had questions. If no one did, he'd say with unbelievably irritating exuberance, "Great, you're ALL my favorite!" I swear, he came thisclose to just looking around at everyone, smiling and saying, "Damn, old people can be CUTE!"

Since I was the only one close to him in age, he tried to take me under his wing and get me to go out with him and his friends in Times Square (where else, right?). Thank God I could honestly say, "Oh, thanks, but I have plans." (My favorite John moment was after the game on Saturday when he blatantly picked up two female Yankees fans and brought them back to the hotel. On the bus! I was trying to imagine his pick-up line: "Hey girls, I don't mean to brag, but see that bus full of the cast from Cocoon? Yeah, I'm kind of like their leader. And you're BOTH my favorite!")

Baseball, okay, let's talk baseball. Friday night's game was rained out, which was karma for having called in sick to work that day, I'm convinced. The weather might have had something to do with it, too. We spent more than an hour in stop-and-go traffic to the Bronx on Friday night during rush hour, just in time to hear that the game had been called and then have to schlep back to Manhattan. It ended up working out okay, though, because my dad and I had a chance to go out to dinner instead of eating ballpark food, and I was able to meet up with Darren earlier than planned. Oh, did you want to hear about that?

The verdict is in, at least on my end: I liked both Darren and Miss Peach even more than I thought I would, which really isn't how meeting people from the internet is supposed to go, right? You always sort of think that they're going to wind up having a snaggletooth or a staring problem. So lucky me! In all seriousness, there's really no false advertising with the two of them... they're both that rare blend of blogarific AND so very funny, warm, and likeable in person. For all Darren's bemoaning about how awkward he is, he really isn't at all, so don't listen to him. I had a great time and was just thrilled to meet both of them.

Oh, and you know how I told Darren that I was guaranteed to vomit spontaneously or fall into a pile of raw sewage? I didn't, BUT while in his and Peach's company I did have a woman spill tequila on my head (oh yes, on my HEAD) and guess what else? I dropped my purse in a toilet. So, yeah. No false advertising with me either, folks. What you see is what you get, and what you get is someone doused in Jose Cuervo and, well, other people's pee, I'm sorry to have to complete that sentence. What can I say? I always try to bring my A game.

Back to baseball, for those of you who care, which is probably none of you: Saturday was sunny and warm, thankfully. My dad got to go back to Yankee Stadium for the first time in twenty years, and me for the first time ever. It was a fantastic game, and not just because THE SOX WON (!!!). There were so many Boston fans that a few times there was actually a Sox cheer going for awhile, until a deafening roar of rebuttal came up from the New Yorkers. Talk about waking the beast.

After we won the Saturday afternoon game (before we went on to lose that night), we were walking back to The Lame Bus and passed by a bunch of cocky drunken frat boy Sox fans spilling out of bars right near the stadium. Dear God, I hope they're all still alive! Don't be stupid, boys, we need you around to keep selling out our bleacher seats. I mean, I hear you, yay Sox, but New Yorkers have guns and shit!

Man, I'm watching the last game of the series as I'm writing this. Lots of good stuff going on (it's like Crisp just grew a bionic arm!), but where the hell was it in August, when it could've meant something? This is exactly why the Sox are the ultimate mindfuck... the season's all but over and they're back to being rock stars. (And ha, I can hear "let's go Red Sox" coming from the stands.)

One funny thing is how articulate the New York t-shirts are compared to Boston's baseball attire. The New York shirts would have columns showing the number of their world series wins compared to Boston, with the slogan "Do the Math." Another one said, "It's Called the World Series But It's Usually Played Here." Contrast this to the fact that down the street from Fenway, there are vendors with shirts that say "Posada is a Little Bitch" and "Damon Throws Like a Girl." Why are we responding to things like "Well, Statistically Speaking, New York is Quite Simply Just a Better Team" with "Ha Ha All the Yankees Are Gay"? That's the best we've got? (Granted, I don't own any of those ghetto shirts myself, which I hope goes without saying.)

Okay, what else? I saw Dave on Saturday night after seven years of radio silence. Well, not total silence, but still. He was even more cool and funny than I remembered. It was so much fun to see him that I didn't let him go home until the next day.

And Kate! Man, I'm telling you, Kate was my rock. Not only did she come out on Friday night to hang with my blogfriends (and she enjoyed them as much as I did), but she also came out the next night to have dinner with my dad and I, and then came to a bar with us to watch that night's game. And when she saw me walking toward her on the street with a Sox hat on, she didn't shield her face and walk in the opposite direction; she calmly retrieved a Yankees hat from her bag. She shared in my horror slash fascination with the new Hilary Duff perfume. And when some woman asked me what the "B" on my hat stood for, Kate was quick to provide her with the information that I was too stunned to supply.

I'm not just complimenting these people because they read my blog, I swear! I just felt so fortunate to have been surrounded by awesomeness all weekend. I mean, really, what are the odds? And even the rained out game ended up having a silver lining: They postponed the game to Sunday and Kate graciously agreed to get rid of our tickets for us, since my dad and I had to be getting home (darn those jobs of ours). She ended up giving the tickets to a dad who had brought the wrong day's tickets for him and his little heartbroken, glove-toting son. Oh my, that just made my day (and made the endless ride to and from the Bronx on Friday seem a little more bearable in retrospect).

And rounding out the awesomeness? I went to Chipotle! I now officially pray at the altar of chips, guac, and green pepper Tabasco sauce. Nabbalicious, I got your exact order, and I feel like everything in the world makes so much more sense now.

At one point on Saturday night, I texted Carly and told her I was having so much fun but that I missed my BFCs (our nickname for her, Melissa, and myself). She texted me some love back. Who else but me would get a tiny bit homesick after a day and a half?

Anyway, I had an absolute blast this weekend. I can't believe that Darren and Miss Peach and Chipotle all lived up to the hype. I love Kate and Dave as much as ever. And, as always, I'm glad to be home, where the ballpark isn't quite as pretty, the t-shirts aren't nearly as articulate, and the burritos are woefully sub par.

If I Can Make it There, I'll Make it Because My Ghetto Bus Somehow Doesn't Break Down in Harlem

I'm going to New York today! Woo!

I sound like such a tourist. I guess I am a tourist. See you at the Olive Garden in Times Square! I'll be the one wearing the foam Statue of Liberty crown.

I'm going to the Friday night and Saturday afternoon Sox-Yankees games with my dad. I've never been to Yankee Stadium before... I'm hugely excited and a little intimidated. Everything about it will seem ass-backwards. Because, well, it is. Do they even play baseball there, or just dance around their piles of money?

Oh snap. I got plenty more junior high locker room trash talkin' where that came from.

I'm glad for my dad to get back to that ballpark. He hasn't been in years, and he's (as you may already know) a diehard Yankees fan. Thank God it's not something you can pass onto your children, because that would've been worse than fetal alcohol syndrome.

The other stuff that makes this trip resplendent with awesomeness is that I get to meet Darren, who made me feel like a rock star with his latest blog entry. I can't wait to hear the deafening collapse of your high expectations, my friend. And I also get to see Dave, Kate, and Jason! And maybe Miss Peach! And unfortunately not Nabbalicious this time, but she was kind enough to fix all my aforementioned blog issues, so yay for her, too!

Anyway, the one good thing about Boston's crappy standings is that I'm not too worried about this:

can you become, can you become a new version of you?

I'll spare you the entire Felicity song. No, I won't!

Look at me! I'm all decked out in a pretty, pretty party dress. (If Darren was an 8-year-old girl, I'd like to think that would be his, or her, blog title.)

Lily sent me the template! Is she the best? I don't have her blog link, though, somehow. So comment on this, Lily, and I'll include your link to give you the props you deserve.

I lost all my comments in the move but I think it's worth it. Right?

Sidenote: We moved when I was six years old and my mom threw out my Barbie Dream House (with the elevator) because she hated it. She told me for years that the movers lost it. I still haven't fully recovered. This time I can say with certainty that the movers lost my comments. And I still miss my Barbie Dream House (with the elevator).

Question: The comma after the number of comments I have is making me suicidal, but I can't find the right place in the html to fix it. Also, any idea how I can make the date a smaller font than the entry title? Actually, I wouldn't mind deleting it altogether, since there's already a datestamp on the bottom, but I'm not sure how to do that either. Also, I wonder how I could make the picture a little smaller.

Also, could you get me a Diet Pepsi?

I guess I'm supposed to figure all this out on my own so that the finished product is a perfect spectacle, but I'm no Oz over here.

if you like pina coladas

You can't tell anything about a person from an online dating profile, maybe aside from whether or not they can spell and their aptitude for using the correct there/their/they're. Everyone thinks they're funny and intelligent and down-to-earth and rational and no game playing, please. Everyone says they want to be with someone who likes to get dressed up and go out, but also likes to wear jeans and a t-shirt and be low-key at home, all of which loosely translates to someone who owns clothes and sometimes enjoys leaving the house.

Crazy people never tell you they're crazy. They don't know they're crazy. Most of them think everyone else is crazy. Personality disorders seem to be largely undiagnosed. Hell, I'm probably rocking a couple of them myself. You can't tell much about a person by how they talk about past relationships or current relationships or family or friendships, because there's two sides to every story, and we all spin things to our advantage, even if we don't mean to.

You can usually assess physical compatability or friendability right off the bat, but of course relationshipability is harder, because foibles come out after the fact, and it's all about your, well, mutual foiblability. Some of the best couples that I know are actually quite different from each other and not people that I necessarily would've thought to fix up if they'd both been single friends of mine. There's really just no way to know. And sites like Match.com do their best, I suppose, by offering up deep dark information like whether or not your date would be open to someday owning a fish, or what their astrological sign is. You don't find out how that person communicates when they're angry, or how they interact with someone who is unkind or intolerant or less intelligent than they are. Whether they listen to you or wait for their chance to talk. Whether they think some people just have different opinions or if that means they're wrong. How they deal with stress. Whether or not they interact with you differently depending on who else is there. What they think is funny and not funny. Whether they're quirky or literal or where they fall in between. Whether they're sexually adventurous or a little more conservative (which, of course, is pretty subjective), or into things you have to Google (with maybe a couple of exceptions, run, run like the wind). How their loved ones speak of them, and not in a tribute speech at a milestone event, but in the kitchen over dirty dishes after everyone's gone home. How they speak of their loved ones, and who they love in general. Not in theory, but who they spend their time with. Who they let in and for what purpose. Who they keep out and who they keep at arm's length. What they spend the bulk of their time doing, despite what they say their interests are. What frustrates them, excites them, unnerves them, turns them on, embarrasses them, makes them pull back, makes them feel understood.

Wait, can you imagine if I sat someone down and asked them all this? I'd be reading about myself in someone else's dating blog. Don't get me wrong, I don't want to get all this detailed information about people I go out with. I'm just saying, there's no way to know right off the bat what you're dealing with or what the person's really like, which can be full of promise but also kind of sucks. They should force people to wear t-shirts that reveal their true selves, like "Will Appear Trustworthy for 3.2 Weeks But Am Actually Rotten to the Core." I'd buy them out of "Only Laughing On the Outside" and "Will Probably Write Crap About You on the Internet."

Contrary to how all this sounds, I'm actually pretty low-key (but sometimes I like to get dressed up and go out) about online dating, and dating in general. I'm just more open to random experiences right now, I guess. He's not potentially the right guy, he's my Tuesday night. Part of my Tuesday night, at that. It's the only way to date a lot without losing your mind, I think. Plus, I rarely have a bad time with someone (uh oh, now I've asked for it). I like some people more than others, obviously, but I find most people have at least a little something funny or interesting to offer.

It's been funny to be "back out there" and meeting and interacting with lots of new people, all of whom have opinions on me. You seem like the kind of person who, I get the sense that you're into, you didn't strike me as the type to. At this point it's all just theater, anecdotes, summaries. When we were kids we didn't analyze our playdates that much... I guess that's how I feel about dating. Fun and connection can exist on several levels, not just could-I-marry-him-and-when. We have plenty of emotional needs beyond that ultimate relationship. We may categorize them after the fact less crudely than "hurtin' for a squirtin,'" but no less honestly: potential, no potential, friend potential, emergency number potential. We all do/have done it, right?

And eventually I'll be interested in meeting someone outside of that last category. I swear!

livin' on the edge

Me: Do you want to see Little Miss Sunshine?
Mark: I was going to ask if you wanted to see How To Eat Fried Worms.
Me: That's cute. Why do you always want to see the dumbest movies?
Mark: Didn't you read that book when you were a kid?
Me: Yeah, I think so. Okay, let's pay to see Sunshine and then we'll sneak into yours.
Mark: I'm not sneaking into a movie, Red. I'm thirty years old.
Me: Well, it's not like you're crawling through an air duct. You just walk out of one movie and walk into the other.
Mark: What if I get caught? Caught sneaking into a movie when I'm thirty years old.
Me: Then, I don't know, fake senility.
Mark: Uh-huh.
Me: Early onset senility.
Mark: Right.
Me: Look confused and bump into something. And then just run out. I'll be right behind you. Don't worry.
Mark: I don't think I want to go to movies with you anymore.

scatterbrain

Tonight at Fenway there were two drunk women sitting in front of me, maybe in their 40s. One of them knocked into the other one's beer and it spilled on me. Blech, but whatever, shit happens. At least I was wearing jeans. The one who was holding the beer immediately started rubbing the spill on my leg over and over. And over. All the while I was saying, "It's fine, I'm fine, don't worry." I didn't want to come out and say "stop rubbing me!" because, I don't know, I try not to ever yell that at anybody in public.

"I think she likes you," my dad finally said, as he and his friends just kind of stared at her. Then she tried to tell her friend that she had knocked her beer into me, and the friend just looked at me and said, very irritated, "What? How did THAT happen?" It seemed too complicated to get into the physics of how flailing elbows + double fisting expensive cheap beer = stranger behind you being pelted with Bud Light. But I did think it was funny that she was the one who seemed annoyed. I'm sorry, did my leg get in the way of your beer-flinging?

Anyway. I'm up too late, again, because I can't sleep. Damn my erratic summer sleeping schedule! My body is so confused now that I'm back to a normal work schedule. "It's 11 PM, Red, why aren't I on a bad date? What's this large, soft thing you've forced me into instead? I don't have to listen to questions like 'So what's something about you that I don't already know?' in here. Actually, it's kind of nice. Let's never get out."

All I can say about SuriGate is that I can't believe Vanity Fair punned so proudly on its cover ("Yes, Suri, She's Our Baby!" in case you live in a world where the procreation of Jerry Maguire and Joey Potter doesn't matter in the slightest). It struck me as funny that the first time you read the headline, it sounds like something a person would say if English wasn't their first language... you pretty much know what they're trying to convey, but it sounds a little off-kilter. Sort of like, "Suri Is Child That We Had, Yes?" Then a moment later you understand the clever, clever wordplay. It's a slippery slope, Vanity. First this, next thing you know it's Orlando Blooms Anew and Kate is Winsletting Us Go Where No Magazine Has Gone Before.

I had to spend all morning in a dumb workshop and I swear, I was practically at the head-jerking-forward-and-everyone-looking-at-me stage. I had to keep biting my tongue to stay awake. Dear God, I didn't realize how insane that sounded until I typed it. I should've gone with "had to keep pinching myself." I was doing that, too.

Best part, though? Beforehand I went to sign up for an afternoon workshop and realized that I was teaching one of them. Faaaantastic. Luckily I have the presentation down pat, but still, public schools are so organized. This isn't even the first time they've done this to me. It would've been funny if I'd been sitting in some workshop while people sat in another room, waiting for me at mine. I'm clearly a professional, through and through.

Not that there's any reason for you to do so, but in case you're wondering, the title of my workshop is Evaluation, Diagnosis and Treatment of Speech and Language Disorders in Elementary School Children. I did not come up with this title. Mine would've been Let's Shoot the Shit for an Hour and Then Go Get Some Quesadillas or Whatever. I wonder how many tongues were being bitten while I talked about assessment protocols.

So, to continue with the topic of not having a topic (I'm all over the place! I'm an animal!), I'm having very very very preliminary thoughts about getting my doctorate. I'd love to take more courses and enhance my dorkdom, but I sort of hate the idea of the dissertation. It would be interesting work, yeah, but it seems impractical... the whole point of my job right now is to get a lot of diverse experience, and a dissertation is basically a two year research project about something obscure that I'll never think about again, like the ramifications of some random neurological problem on cognitive-linguistic processing in 11-year-old females from Wisconsin with deviated septums and seasonal affective disorder.

I would maybe eventually like to have my own clinic (and not just because Crazy Neighbor tells me I should). I'd also like to teach grad school classes. I don't necessarily need a doctorate for either of those things, but, y'know... couldn't hurt. What a compelling argument. "Y'know, couldn't hurt" is going right at the top of the "pro" list. Maybe I'll just eliminate the middleman and try to get on the list for one of those honorary degrees that they hand out at graduations. Ooh, could I also give a speech? I'd love an opportunity to tell new grads to follow their hearts but don't go chasing waterfalls. Am I getting carried away?

Whatever, school is boring. You know who's cute and back from the dead, i.e. the DL? And like most of the other players he's utterly useless, which is evident based on our standings... at this point we'd have to lie, cheat, steal, sleep around, bark like a dog and wish on shooting stars to even have a shot in hell at the wild card. But still... it's Tek and he's back, woo!

I love whoever it was who said that most of the Sox players have a look about them that says if they weren't playing ball, they'd be working behind the counter at some crappy music store. So true.

20 Reasons Why You Probably Shouldn't Like Me

Another blogger (not a Neighborhooder) had a list of 20 things she doesn't like that everyone else does. I have a few of those myself, but let's cut right to the chase, shall we?

I present to you, in no particular order, twenty good reasons to delete me from your bookmarks immediately.

1. I don't like camping. As far as I'm concerned, Red Roof Inn is roughing it. No, I don't freakin' come out and say this if some nice person is excited about their upcoming camping trip. If that's your thing, then more power. But when a friend told me he slept on the beach when he went to Hawaii, believe you me I thought it sounded more homeless than romantic.

2. I don't like dogs. This is a big one. Who doesn't like dogs? Certainly not anyone worth knowing. Here's the thing... I like dogs in THEORY. I love the IDEA of having a dog. But in reality, they slobber and shed and kind of smell and I'm sorry, but their butts are just never that clean, and if there was one rolling around on my bed, that's all I'd be thinking about.

3. I don't like cats. I don't feel quite so bad about this one, because feline hatred is more socially acceptable. I hate how cats sit under a piece of furniture and stare at you. Seriously, why is that okay? If I sat in somebody's living room and stared at them, there'd be awkward conversations and restraining orders, not catnip and succulent chunks of Fancy Feast in a silver dish. And cats will just be hanging out, nice and mellow, and then suddenly they'll freakishly decide theyhavetobeintheotherroomRIGHTTHISSECOND!

4. I don't like football. I can't tolerate even one second of it. I can't even deal with the Superbowl, even though the Pats always seem to win it. My family and friends always have a Superbowl party and I just lie on the floor eating dip and missing baseball so very much. But I still go to the party, because, duh, there's dip.

5. When it gets dark early in the winter, I don't mind. I don't mind it at ALL. I actually think it's cozy. In New England, this is practically grounds for public lynching.

6. I like Oprah magazine, but I can't make it all the way through Anna Karenina.

7. For about ten years, my favorite song has been You Get What You Give by the New Radicals.

8. A lot of the time, I'm not even listening to you.

9. No, I'm kidding. What'd you say?

10. Things I will defend until I'm blue in the face: the movie Cruel Intentions, the show Felicity, and Frank's Red Hot Sauce.

11. Steve Irwin's death is definitely sad, but there hasn't been such a rampant misuse of the word "ironic" since Alanis released that stupid song in the late 90s.

12. I think I need to tone this down a little. Even I'm starting to not like me. Steve Irvin was a goddamn Australian hero, Red! Show some freakin' respect! Crikey.

13. For awhile I was having a bunch of fiestas, so much so that it was looking like I was vying for the title of hostess with the mostest... but these days I just have friends over to drink wine and watch TV. It's an exciting life, people, but someone has to lead it. (But maybe I'll entertain the idea of getting back on the party train. When you're the hostess, you can wear things like glittery false eyelashes because everyone coming already knows you're a big freak... and if they're a friend of a friend, they've probably been sufficiently warned.)

14. I like terrible music. Does it get any better than iTunes' Party Hip-Hop collection? Go look it up. I'll wait here.

15. While on iTunes admiring their aforementioned Party Hip-Hop collection, I found that I liked Kyra Sedgwick and Kevin Bacon's sex song mix. Oh, also, why did Kyra Sedgwick and Kevin Bacon publish a sex song mix on iTunes?

16. I'm probably more like Sally (the one Harry met) than I'd like to admit, in that I'm the worst kind: high-maintenance but think I'm low-maintenance. This reality comes crashing down on me when I find myself around someone who actually IS low-maintenance. This person is usually camping, petting a dog, and enthusiastically reading Tolstoy.

17. I don't like violent TV shows... CSI, Law and Order, Dissecting the Corpse, Let's Watch a 7-Year-Old Get Stabbed in Slow Motion shows. I don't like even like 24, and nobody doesn't like 24. Jack Bauer can practically turn straight men gay, for cryin' out loud.

18. I have a touch of road rage. But only because the guy in the white Honda TOTALLY STARTED IT!

19. One time my old roommate and I were watching an episode of Jackass where two of the guys tried to race each other to drink a gallon of milk. They drank a whole bunch really fast and then both started throwing up milk everywhere. My roommate started gagging and ran to the bathroom and started throwing up herself. It suddenly seemed like the entire world was puking. I could not stop laughing. Eventually I helped peel her off the bathroom floor, but in the meantime, oh my, that was comedy at its most basic level.

20. For Halloween, I'm considering going as JonBenet If She'd Lived: too much mascara, at least one black eye, a track mark or two, and, of course, the cowgirl outfit. Yee-ha! May she rest in peace.

Thanks for your time. I'll show myself out.

it's a dirty job, but someone has to be home watching TV on a Saturday night

My youngest cousin couldn't come to the Cape for the weekend because he just started college. He called me Saturday night around ten.

Me: Hi!
Youngest Cousin: Hey! What are you doing?
Me: We miss you.
YC: I miss you guys, too... what's up?
Me: We're watching Dirty Jobs.
YC: Who is?
Me: Me and Andrew [his brother].
YC: It's Saturday night.
Me: It's such a good episode. Mike is visiting this woman in South Africa who takes care of these monkeys, right?
Andrew: It's a monkey sanctuary!
Me: Yeah, so she and her husband live in a house in the middle of this field and the monkeys run around all wild and bite people.
Andrew: And they claw at the windows and try to get into the house.
Me: It's like the people are living in a cage!
Andrew: And there's the weird thing with the fruit.
Me: Yeah, this woman spends HOURS cutting up fruit just right to feed to the monkeys, even though it's like, who cares if it's perfect, they're monkeys, they're gonna eat it. And she has this totally great, bizarre dynamic with Mike. I wish he'd bring her everywhere he goes.
Andrew: She needs her own show.
YC: What are you watching again?
Me: Dirty Jobs.
Andrew: We can't stop watching. It's a marathon.
Me: Do you get the Discovery Channel at school?
YC: So I'm gonna let you go.