How are you today? I'm superfantastic.

Because Honestly Don't You Think It's High Time You Started Pitching In Around Here?

So the whole "no problem, a great job will definitely fall into my lap any day now" attitude has begun to fade and I have started to freak out a little in a "hmmm...perhaps this might not work out in so stellar a fashion as I had hoped" sort of low-grade freak out.  So in this particular post, the burden falls on you, dear readers, to take on some of the writing duties.

Today we'll be completing sort of a reverse-meme in which I tag all of you to answer a series of questions.  And yes, I ripped this idea off from Nothing But Bonfires, but I have written my own questions, thank you very much.

Actually, I wrote these questions in a boredom-induced email to my then-roommate Vicki when we were both cut loose by the same employer after September 11 and I was temping and she was home, emailing me.  I wrote a fake employment application for the fake business I was starting.  See, I had spent many many hours typing meeting minutes from dictation and so I emailed Vicki to say that when I had my own multinational corporation, the minutes would read: We had a meeting.  You kind of had to be there.  She expressed interest in working for such a corporation and thus, the application.  (And if anyone from that particular office is reading, I'm pretty sure I did this on my lunch hour.  Yeah, that's right.  Definitely not company time.)

The real fun began when Vicki and I printed out these applications and had people fill them out at our Christmas party.  Some people even filled out a second copy as the liquid refreshments rendered them even wittier (at least as far as they were concerned.)

So now, I present four of those questions:

1.) Who, in your opinion, was the most admirable puppet to appear on television?

2.) Name the three prepositions that most accurately describe you.  Explain.

3.) Easy Bake or Lite Brite?  Why?

4.) Would you rather be a) a bowling ball, b) Swiss cheese, or c) Mickey Rooney?  Please give two reasons for your choice, only one of which may be "because."

You may choose to answer any or all.  You could even angrily explain why one of these questions is the most ridiculous question in the entire history of questions, as my friend Don Holmes did at the party with the preposition question.  Which he then proceeded to answer with "Under - I am undereducated to answer this question, Over - this question is over my head."

Why don't I get us started with some answers of my own?

1. Kermit the Frog, obviously.  Kermit blazed a trail for the multi-tasking television journalists of today by reporting the fairytale news for Sesame Street while simultaneously running the whole operation over at the Muppet Show.  He kept his cool while dealing with numerous chickens, monsters, hecklers, and one randy pig.  Sort of makes Katie Couric look like a giant slacker.  And she never had to face discrimination over being green which, as we know, is not easy.

2. Out - I'm about to be out of a job.  Toward - I am moving toward a new career or maybe just a lot of debt.  To - I would like to go back to bed now.

3. Due to health concerns regarding food cooked by a light bulb, I'm sticking with Lite Brite.  Not every Easy Bake creation is edible, but every Lite Brite creation is art.

4. Swiss cheese because: a) Just like Julia Roberts in Steel Magnolias, I would rather have five minutes of wonderful than a whole lifetime of nothing special (no offense, Mickey Rooney) and as we all know, cheese is wonderful yet short-lived.  b) Because.

Ok, your turn.

moveon.holycrap

So.  I quit my job today.  What?  All the cool kids are doing it.  Ok, I didn't quit to do something as cool as freelancing from home or spending six months traveling in Southeast Asia, but I did in fact give my notice to my boss today.

I was pretty nervous about doing it.  Of course I managed to procrastinate it a while but that was not even mostly my fault because I have two bosses and was hoping to tell them both together, but they're never there at the same time when I'm not in with students so I couldn't ever do it.  But today, I decided come hell or high water, I was quitting my job.  So I told one of my bosses who, since he is married to my other boss, can quite conveniently pass this information along to her.

I gave a month notice, mostly because reading camp is coming up and so they need to know far enough in advance to get someone else to teach it.  And in a month, I am moving to Austin.  Where I have...no job and no place to live.  Yet.

So do you know anyone in Austin who needs to hire someone with impeccable spelling and grammar skills?  Or who can type real fast?  Or teach kids to read?

I suppose I ought to be freaking out at this moment, but in true Lori fashion, I just can't work up the necessary energy to freak out.   I sort of used up all of my freak out and also the caffiene in one great big mocha on walking into my boss's office to quit.  But he was super nice about it and very understanding about me wanting to get a job in the writing/editing field and to live somewhere besides San Antonio and if that's what I want to do they're behind me in a total best case quitting scenario.

Plus, I've moved a lot and had a lot of contract and temporary jobs that just ended and I had to find a new one.  And I always have.  See, history teaches us that it's all good and who am I to freak out in the face of history?  For some reason, certain pragmatic types think this is not a valid theory and repeatedly ask "but WHY are you moving?" and are incapable of understanding the "because I WANT to." response.  But that's life when you have gypsy tendencies and no impulse for worrying.

The good news is that I do have a roommate.  Well, three to be exact, but two are of the canine persuasion.  Amy and I were roommates all four years of college and have known each other since kindergarten.  Which means we've managed to put up with each other for over two decades, two of those years while sharing a dorm room roughly the size of my current closet.  Unless you count frequent violent pillow and/or waterfights, some of which left inches of standing water in the kitchen, we got along really well.  (And if you have a house to rent in Austin, we promise we would NEVER do the standing water thing in YOUR house.)  We have a lot in common in terms of being generally laid back and heavy into dairy products but are polar opposites in the sense that she's a P.E. teacher and plays sports for fun and doesn't even think that watching the State of the Union is a good time.  I know!  Some people.

So hopefully we'll be finding a house this Saturday and I'll be finding an amazing job any day now and Amy will get the job she's interviewing for and Austin will be an incredible experience for us starting June 1.  Anyone want to visit the LBJ Library with me?  Because I don't think Amy does even though I've heard that they have an animatronic LBJ!  (My friend Jon has already claimed Animatronic LBJ as his band name so, you know, dibs.)

Also on Saturday, I'll be doing this because I watched this and want to help them.  I think you should do it too.

Quotable weekend

I do not think it means what you think it means:

It says here that chocolate and greasy foods don't really cause acne.  The only foods that can exacerbate acne are sushi and shellfish.

Ooooh, are we having sushi or shellfish?

Ummm...exacerbate means "make worse."

Oh.  Crap!

Busted:

I don't feel good.  I don't know if it was the grease or the cheese or the pepperoni.

Yeah, I try to stay away from pepperoni at night.  Oh my gosh, that's something that old people say!!!

Of hors d'oevres and vowel sounds:

Speaking of canapes: What are can-apes?

That's can-uh-pays.

Don't feel bad.  From the way it's spelled, it really ought to be pronounced can-apes.

You've been spending too much time with phonics.

Yes, it might be time for a career change.

Thought process:

Mmmm...coffee.  I will go in the kitchen and make coffee.  Doo dee doo, walking to the kitchen to make coffee.  What is this drinking glass doing here on the counter with the recycling?  Is it broken?  Nope, not broken.  I will helpfully put it in the dishwasher.  There is a lot of recycling stuff here.  I will take it to the bin in the garage.  Whew!  Glad that's done.  Now I will go back to reading the Jimmy Carter book that will not end!

Forty five minutes later, smacks forehead.  Coffee!

When One Punk Is More Punks Than Enough

Did you want to hear a story about an interesting person I met in Europe last year?  Good!  Because nothing interesting at all is happening in my current life!

So there Angela and I were on an overnight train from Paris to Berlin.  We walked into our tiny little compartment where we found a middle aged and (as it turned out) extremely uptight Polish woman.  She spoke some English and was telling us about having been in Paris visiting a friend but how with George W. Bush as U.S. President it's not really safe for a woman to travel alone.  Angela and I, no great fans of the President and ready to assign a multitude of problems to him, couldn't quite lay that one at his door.  But we kept chatting as we waited for the train to depart, all hoping very much that we three would have the compartment to ourselves.

Enter Julian.  He was roughly 6'4, wearing black boots, black pants, and a black t-shirt.  And his long black hair smelled as if it hadn't been washed this millennium.  Julian had his walkman with him and a backpack full of batteries and tapes.  Cassette tapes.  (No shampoo was mentioned.)  Julian asked us to guess his age, which Angela did correctly: 22.  When he asked how she knew, I believe her exact words were "all guys like you are 22."

Julian asked how we liked Paris.  We loved it! we told him.  Julian hated Paris.  He had only been there for a day, just waiting for his chance to get on a train to Berlin.  He'd come from his home in Canada to Europe on a 1-year open ticket for the purpose of going to Berlin to look for a trailer park that he'd heard about which was rumored to be populated by 900 punks.  This was Julian's entire plan.  Ask around about the trailer park with the 900 punks.  Then go there, assuming it exists.

Julian's only concern with this plan was the problem of Nazis.  He asked the Polish lady (visibly squirming by this point) whether there were still a lot of Nazis in Berlin.  She was horrified by this idea and explained that all of the Nazis were either dead or in South America by now.  As Julian continued to question her, she got more flustered, claimed not to understand his English, then finally got up and told us that she was going to visit a friend in another compartment, which was of course code for "get away from scary Julian."

On this point, we also differed with our Polish friend.  Julian, while somewhat irritating and also smelly, did not seem dangerous in the least.  Sure, he'd had his brushes with the law.  In fact, Julian might still be blissfully living in the woods in Oregon or riding the American rails all hobo-like were he not prevented from further U.S. travel by outstanding warrants in several states.  But these were mostly mooning- and marijuana possession-related.  Julian is a pot-smoker, not a fighter.

By the time the ticket agent had come around, Julian had hatched a sure-fire plan for seeing Europe on the cheap: he would not buy any more train tickets.  At all.  Because by the time they check the tickets, you're out of the city where you started and what are they going to do but kick you out at the next stop?  Julian thus figured that when he got tired of punk park living, he could just freeload from stop to stop all the way to Norway.  Good plan, Julian.

At some point along the way, while walking around the train, Julian made a German friend and they made a plan to meet up later to smoke pot together.  Maybe he'll go smoke pot and forget where his compartment is! we thought.  No such luck since the smoke pot locale they had chosen was our compartment.  Angela put her foot down at this point, and they were forced to leave, but shortly returned.  As did our Polish friend as seats in the rest of the train had filled. 

Julian's friend turned out to be much more interesting and (dare I say) intelligent than our Julian and he filled us in on the political atmosphere in Germany.  Apparently Julian's fear of Nazis was not unfounded as there was a neo-Nazi movement among young people upset about immigration and unemployment.  He repeatedly urged Julian to "look where you're going."  Sadly, he had no information on the trailer park.

Julian's friend left as we were joined by a fifth ticketed passenger who really could have been a German-speaking Ralph Lauren model based on his looks and clothing.  So he and Julian didn't seem likely to hit it off.  As we approached Brussels, Julian expressed some interest in seeing it and we teamed up to urge him to hop off.  Carpe diem!  No time like the present!  We've heard there's a punk tent city there, Julian!  No dice.

And then we tried to sleep.  And Julian decided the best plan would be for him to stretch out on the floor.  So he did.  The remaining four of us tried to sleep curled up on the seats, including our poor model friend who had to be at least 6 feet tall and considerably less curl-able than we females.  So it was a long night.

And now we hope Julian is living in punk bliss in a nice German trailer.  Maybe he's even made it all the way to Norway.  But probably he's in German jail for something.  Look where you're going, Julian.  And for the love of God, wash your hair.

Milestone

Yes, Internet, the moment has arrived.  I have received my first mean comment.  Congratulate me, won't you?  It reads as follows:

Consider going to a batting cage, deposit a quarter in the fastball machine. Then climb into cage and stand in front to the pitching machine. you will quickly learn, thus not clogging this blog with insensitive irrelavant [sic] material.

Well.  First of all, OF COURSE it's irrelevant.  Nothing on this blog has ever been relevant to much of anything (although I fail to see how that particular post could be less relevant than, oh say, the two posts that I wrote about snot.)  I hate to think that it's clogged though.  The irrelevance ought to slide down real smooth-like.

But insensitive?  Have I unwittingly offended someone by describing my own total inability to play sports and my fear of rapidly approaching objects?  I don't understand it, but if so, then you have my deepest heart-felt apologies.

I don't mean here to insinuate that people shouldn't feel free to comment however they like.  I'm no great fan of censorship, so if you'd like to express your overwhelming desire to see me pommeled with baseballs, by all means comment away.  And if I offend you, of course let me know. 

And if I make you angry with inane drivel about my rather uninteresting life?  Well, if someone is holding a gun to your head and forcing you to read this, leave me a comment in code and I'll send the authorities right over to arrest my mom.  Otherwise you could always stop reading.

Catch and Release

I believe that I have already mentioned that I don't catch.  This is not a matter of preference as some people seem to believe.  It's not I'd really rather not catch, thanks.  I CAN"T catch.  I have an actual medical condition people.  It is called very little depth perception.  And it means that when you throw a ball at me, I have no idea how far away that ball is, making it damn near impossible to catch.  This also makes volleyball a waking nightmare.

My former roommate Vicki shared this inability to catch.  In fact, we thought maybe we should buy a beach ball (large and yet unlikely to cause injury) and play a game we called Try to Catch.  If we ever needed to throw something to each other, such as the remote or a Rollo, there was much warning and a soft underhand throw.  My current roommates and I also share this understanding.

And yet, all last weekend, I kept having to convince various people that I couldn't catch, and no, I didn't want them to teach me.  I've made it through 28 years of life and 13 years of public school PE without ever obtaining this skill.  It's not about technique, folks.  I've accepted my inability to catch and moved on.  Join me, won't you?

The sporty people are perpetually convinced that you really want to play whatever sport they're playing and you are just waiting for them to beg, cajole, and mock you into it.  Yes, sporties, we know that you'd be bored out of your mind just watching the game and that you'd want nothing more than to get in there.  Good for you.  The rest of us, on the other hand, are perfectly content to watch.  I will even cheer for you and marvel at your ability to hit a quickly moving ball with a skinny little bat or to catch that ball as it drops from the sky directly toward your face.

Despite your assurances that no one cares how badly we play, we know that there are always one or two of you who take the game WAY too seriously, no matter how casual and not-mattering it may be, and will get seriously upset with our inability to hit/kick/bump/catch/throw the ball/frisbee.  And you will yell at us.  And we will ask if we can please go back to sitting in the sun and possibly reading.

So let it go, people.  I can't catch.  I've never been good at any sport ever.  And I'm fine.  This has not held me back in life as much as you might suspect.  You have a good game though.  I'll be over here, working on my burn.  I mean tan.

The Great Outdoors

Oh readers, I am peeling.  Really just on my shoulders and more so on my right than left.  But my how it itches.

But on to camping.  We camped at this lake.

Seriously, how are you supposed to see the sign if you can't see THE LAKE?!?!

Due to the dry and windy conditions, there was a burn ban keeping us from having a real camp fire, but we did manage to make s'mores over the grill.  Some people may have also eaten several Nutterbutters and Peanutbutter Oreos too.  And Cookie Crisp for breakfast.  I heard that those same people may have played MASH when they discovered that it was too windy to play cards.

Our accommodations were rather cozy with three people to each rather tiny tent.  And we shared a campground with many young and rude people who insisted on talking just inches outside our tent until the wee hours of the morning.  It's possible that the sleep deprivation may have affected our judgement.

If you ask Melissa, I'm sure she'll tell you the story behind this look.

So sorry if you were expecting zany stories involving wacky wildlife.  The trip was pleasantly zaniness-free aside from a flesh-eating bacteria scare.  Well, really only one person was scared and the trouble spot seems to have normalized.  I for one am glad to be back in civilization with a junebug-free bathroom.  But I do kind of miss the Nutterbutters.

Important Update

Ok, not really "important" but you're reading, so my catchy hook worked!  Except why would you be here if not to read?

Anyway, it turns out that if you procrastinate whining about your sunburn until 4 days after it has occurred, by the next day it will have mostly faded to a pinkish-brown and moved into the Itchy Phase.  I am very hopeful that tomorrow will bring an end of the days of the lukewarm shower (I don't know who Luke was, but he must have been one room temperature guy!  Ba-dum-bum.)  I did finally sleep well last night, which is good timing considering that I leave tomorrow for two nights of camping.  So I can get two nights of decent sleep in before two nights of trying to somehow curve my body around all of the many rocks trying to lodge their way painfully into my ribs.  At least this has been my previous camping experience.  Maybe this time will be like sleeping on air and I will awake rested and refreshed!  But probably not.

In positive news, a student today told me both that I look way too young to be 25 (I didn't lie and tell her that I am 25, Internet!  That's the age that she guessed yet also thought I looked much younger than!) and when describing an extremely, shockingly thin woman said, "even skinnier than you!"  God bless that girl.  It sort of made up for a heartwarming moment gone bad a few weeks ago with a different student.  A 7 year-old boy I work with reached up to touch my face and said "so pretty."  Which was the moment that I flashed back to when, minutes later, I caught him picking his nose.  So that one was a little tainted.  Not to mention (except I am mentioning!) all of the unwitting insults you get from the special kids.  For example:

"Your hair looks like a noodle." 

"Old people wear their glasses like this." (pulls glasses down nose)  "Why don't you wear your glasses like this?" 

Teenage boy using vocabulary word maroon in a sentence, "You have a maroon spot" (points to zit on my chin.) 

"Your forehead is shiny.  I want my forehead to be shiny like that."  Well, little one, give it a few years.

And I close this smorgasbord of randomness with a delightful anecdote about cereal!  Earlier I was noticing on the box of Target Brand Frosted Shredded Wheat how there was a picture of the cereal in milk and underneath the picture it said Serving Suggestion.  And I very prissily thought well how else are you going to eat Frosted Shredded Wheat aside from in a bowl with milk?  At which time I realized that the reason I was looking at the box was because it was sitting on my desk because I had just been eating the dry cereal directly out of it.  Which got me thinking about how Jennie and I would have been millionaires by now if we'd only gone through with the plan to publish our diet book. 

When we moved into our apartment in New York, we had an ancient little fridge which waited until right after we'd gotten groceries to stop working and take all of our perishables down with it.  This process was repeated after repairs to that fridge, its slightly newer replacement, and the fridge that came after that one.  So we spent a lot of time with no functional fridge at all and began to subsist entirely on Frosted Mini Wheats.  To the extent that we were shocked, SHOCKED that we didn't win the trip to Disney World on the box.  Because no one could have possibly ingested more Frosted Mini Wheats that summer than Jennie and I.   The all dry Mini Wheat diet, plus the fourth floor walk-up apartment equaled stunning weight loss for both of us and we thought we'd make our fortune off the No Refrigerator Diet.  And yet here I am giving our lucrative secrets away for free.  Unplug the fridge.  Eat the Mini Wheats (you are allowed pretzels dipped in mustard or plain pasta as well) and walk really unreasonably quickly everywhere you go.  Pretend that frenzied New Yorkers are closing in around you or that you are the professor of a class that's just about to start except that you haven't even gotten on the subway yet!  The pounds will melt away.

Don't say I never gave you anything.

Feel the burn

Being a pasty person of Irish/Norwegian/German descent, I am normally extremely responsible about the sunscreen.  I wear 45 spf.  I apply early and often.  I wear a hat to the beach to protect my face but also because I will otherwise burn my scalp right through my hair.

So there it was, Sunday afternoon, and Holly and I were headed out to watch the Trinity University softball team, of which our friend Krystal is a coach.  Except Holly was headed out and I was still very much not so ready to head out.  I had no shoes on.  I hadn't gotten our chairs from the patio.  I hadn't rummaged through all of my bathroom stuff to find my sunscreen.  So with Holly standing by the door, keys in hand, two out of three seemed good.  Until we spent a couple of hours sitting in direct sunlight, that is. 

Oh, the sunburn.  It goes from my shoulders down to knuckles and from just above my knees to a point on my feet where the flip flop straps were.  Of course the shoulders and knees are by far the reddest and most painful since those are the areas that are supposed to, in theory, bend.  My face actually fared much better, thanks I'm sure to the spf 15 in the Neutrogena moisturizer.  My nose got a little pink and there is a noticeable line from my rather massive J.Lo sunglasses, which, Internet, I promise I didn't know were J.Lo brand until I had already tried them on at Marshalls and liked them too much to put them back.

So there's been a lot of bad sleep and Solarcaine Burn Relief Aloe Extra Gel which, incidentally, smells like working at Ann Taylor.  (Not that I wore it there or they had it there, it's just that thing where a scent triggers a memory.  You know that thing, right?)  So anyway, I'm religious about aloe and thus very rarely peel.  But if you could keep your fingers crossed for the no-peel streak to continue, I'd appreciate it.

Also, there's been a lot of people coming up to me saying "did you get burned?"  And since it currently appears as if I am wearing a white tank top and shorts over a bright red unitard, this question is not so much dumb as really super-ridiculous.

And the worst part of the whole thing is that I know better and I have done this to myself.  Believe me, I curse my stupid forgetting of the sunscreen every time I wake up in the night from rolling over on my stomach, causing my knees to come into painful contact with the bed.

In an unrelated story, I heard that No Diggity song on the radio yesterday, which reminded me that I had really meant to write a Winter Olympics post which would have included the following section entitled Why I Should Never Meet Olympic Skiing Champion Ted Ligety:

Ted Ligety: (extends hand) Ted Ligety.

Me: (giggles inappropriately) No doubt.

That is all.

Feta the Three-Legged Cheese

Amy got a puppy last year.  A male yellow lab, weighing at the time, less than 10 pounds.  That tiny puppy, Colby Jack, now weighs almost 100 pounds.  Colby is a purebred lab purchased from a breeder and his life has been days full of toys, naps, and plenty to eat.

We don't know where his new puppy sister came from.  She looks a lot like Colby and the vet says she may have some shepherd in her as well.  She's about four months old.  Amy saw her outside the middle school where she works (Amy works there, not the puppy.)  The puppy and a pit bull were sniffing each other innocently enough and then the pit bull attacked.  It bit her ear and then got her leg in its mouth and didn't let go.  Amy tried to grab the pit bull's collar but it was only a flea collar and broke off.  The school's police officer came over and hit the pit bull with his club until it ran away.

They called Animal Control to come for the pit bull.  They tried shelters, but no one would take the injured puppy.  So Amy took the puppy to Colby's vet and arranged for her care.  She named the puppy Feta (in keeping with the cheese name theme) and Feta will be losing her injured leg this week.  She has already lost her fleas and gotten her shots.  If all goes well, she'll also be getting spayed while at the vet's (wouldn't Bob Barker be proud) and will be coming home to live with Amy and Colby later this week.

That was her all drugged up just after getting to the vet's office.  And later on, less drugs, more humiliation:

All of this is of course very expensive and unexpected, but the alternative was to let Animal Control take her and put her down.  If you'd like to chip in to help cover the cost of Feta's surgery, email me or leave a comment and I'll email you.