How are you today? I'm superfantastic.

Underwear as far as the eye could see...

It's the ice cream sandwich that really pisses me off.

See, the burglar or burglars who broke into our house today while we were gone took the time to take an ice cream sandwich from the freezer, eat it and throw the wrapper in the trash.

NEVER MIND that they had left our underwear scattered all over our rooms when they pulled our drawers out or just dumped out the contents of my backpack onto the couch before using it to carry out the stuff they stole.

AT LEAST THEY DIDN'T LITTER.

The stuff they stole includes my computer, iPod, garnet earrings, and a bag containing every necklace that I owned (none of which have one damn bit of value to anybody but me) along with Holly's iPod, CDs, and her jewelry, some of which was actually quite valuable, both sentimentally and monetarily.

For those of you who are wondering, I think I last backed up the contents my computer a year ago?  Maybe?  And yes.  I KNOW.  But it is TOO LATE NOW.  LESSON LEARNED, "BACKING UP IS ESSENTIAL" SERMON NOT NEEDED.

As much as I am not in a position to buy a new computer right now, I think it's the loss of the stuff that was on it that bothers me more.  Along with the idea that anybody could be looking at anything on there right now.  No, I do not think the most likely teenage miscreants who took it have any interest in my photos and Word documents, but they can see them and I can't and that makes me very, very upset.

I say most likely teenage because of the stuff they did not steal, which includes a whole box of checks that was in my bedroom.

The police officer says they can check the pawn shops for my computer and our iPods if we give them the serial numbers (although he also said the burglars will most likely keep the iPods).  The fingerprint guy says since this is probably the work of kids, they'll probably get a match on these fingerprints when the perpetrator is arrested years from now for something else.

But I really want the fingerprints to help them catch the guy.  Because wouldn't it be some kind of justice if the asshole got caught based on those very nice fingerprints he left on an ice cream sandwich wrapper?

Oh, Lori. Is nothing sacred?

From an actual conversation I just had with the roommate regarding what to wear for happy hour/dinner/post-dinner drinks tomorrow:

"Not too hoochie.  Just hoochie enough.  Like if Goldilocks were a hoochie."

In that spirit, coming soon (out of my mouth):

• Jack Sprat could eat no fat and his wife had a muffin top coming over her low-rise jeans.
• Little Jack Horner sat in a corner throwing napkins at two girls down the bar.  (Keep up people!  Honestly, it's like you're not even reading my Twitter.)  (Hey, look!  All of the tweets that disappeared are back!)
• "Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair."  "I can't.  I cut it off because it was totally covering up my lower back tattoo."
• Jack and Jill went up the hill, Jack mostly so he could watch Jill bend over in her miniskirt to fetch a pail of water.
• Little Miss Muffet sat on her tuffet, eating her curds and whey.  Along came a spider who sat down beside her and said, "Hey, baby.  Nice tuffet."
• Peter, Peter pumpkin eater had a wife and couldn't keep her, so he bought a Porsche and some hair plugs and went on a singles cruise.
• There was a crooked man and he walked a crooked mile, thus failing his field sobriety test.

And they all lived happily ever after.  The end.

It was all yellow.

San Antonio, that is, according to one of my students.  He said he thinks that every place has a color and while where he's from in Connecticut is green, San Antonio is yellow.  I can see where he's coming from there. 

Yes, the grass is all yellow-looking now, thanks to the drought, but there's also the sunshine and a certain brightness about the place.  Moving here from DC, where everyone is perpetually dressed in black, brown, gray, or navy, I noticed right away that people here dress in bright colors (I think no matter how long I live here, I'll still stick closer to the DC palate.) and there's also just a certain fiesta vibe about the place that has a bright yellow feel to it.

When I got back from Europe, I bought three photo albums in green, red, and blue (sort of a cornflower/periwinkle, really).  Italy went in red, France in blue, Germany/Czech Republic/Switzerland in green.  I don't remember putting any real thought into those choices, but they all make perfect sense to me. 

Vegas, to me is an easy one: gold, all garish and glittery.  Madison, I am thinking of as light blue.  It's the sky and the lakes and sort of a general clean simplicity.  But it's also a frosty shade for, let us not forget, I damn near froze to death there.

All of this reminds me too of Elizabeth Gilbert being told in Eat, Pray, Love that every city has a word that sums it up.  Rome's word, she is told, is sex.  She decides that New York would have to be a verb, like achieve.  This causes her to set out to find the word that is her.  It turns out to be a word in another language that I don't remember and am not going to find for you since I have yet to unpack my books.  You'll just have to live with suspense, I suppose, unless you've read the book or just really don't care.

Because I am terribly self-involved, all of this makes me consider what my color and word would be.  The color was fairly easy to choose.  I think I'd be a shade of blue-gray.  Mellow, yet indecisive.  I've been told that my element (of earth, air, water, or fire) is water because I appear tranquil, but there's a lot going on in the depths that can't be seen from the surface.  So I wouldn't be that brilliant aqua shade of the Caribbean that lets you see all the way to the bottom.  More like the steel blue of the Atlantic off the beach I used to visit in North Carolina, I think.  Somewhat impenetrable.

But I don't know about my word.  It has been easy for me to choose for other people.  For Katie, I first chose driven, but then realizing that she, like New York, needed a verb, I decided on strive instead.  Katie seemed agreeable to my choice.  When I told my friend Krystal that I thought her word was sunshine, she said that Sunshine was a nickname of hers with some people I don't know.  So, while I'm not sure if it's the one word she'd choose for herself, I have to think that means I wasn't too far off.

I've been trying out words for myself, but nothing seems quite right.  Please don't say that this makes my word indecisive.  I can't quite bring myself to accept that.  I think I just haven't quite struck on the right word yet.  I'll keep searching the recesses of my vocabulary and let you know if I come up with anything.

In the meantime, tell us what your color and word are.  Also, please tell us why you chose them.  And if you have an idea for my word, by all means, enlighten us.