How are you today? I'm superfantastic.

Stomps feet. Shakes fists. Throws self on floor. Holds breath and turns red.

I DON'T WANT to write more cover letters.

I DON'T WANT to tape up boxes.

But more than anything, I DON'T WANT TO PACK MY STUFF AGAIN I JUST GOT HERE AND UNPACKED EVERYTHING TWENTY MINUTES AGO.

I need to apply for more jobs.  I need to pack up my apartment.  I need, at some point, to figure out what all I need to pack for a trip to New York and Texas and two weddings and a rehearsal dinner and possibly a Broadway show.

What I want to do is just go to bed and sleep for a long, long time.  I don't know why I'm so tired.  I slept a lot this weekend.  And when I wasn't sleeping I wasn't doing anything strenuous (say, oh I don't know, PACKING.)  As evidence of this, I present a portion of a phone conversation I had with Katie on Saturday night:

"I'm drinking a beer and watching The War Room."

"I'm drinking a beer and watching baseball."

We are two wild and kraaaaaaazy girls!  I'll let you decide which one was me.  (Hint: It would take a lot more than one beer to make baseball any kind of interesting to me.  Like maybe if a ballpark had some sort of Ladies' Night with free cosmos and the crowd gets to decide which players are Shirts and which players are Skins.  I might go to that.) 

Anyway, to sum up: sleepy, have to move as soon as I get back from my trip, need a job soon, out of beer, but do still have tequila.

Won't you help me continue my procrastination, Internet?  Perhaps I could regale you with some tidbits of randomness.

1. I saw a woman go to a vending machine today and come back with cheese curds.  Even if they weren't in the vending machine, as I believe they were, then that only means that she was walking around with cheese curds in her purse.  Only in Wisconsin

2. I got my hair cut tonight.  It looks ok so far.  The stylist started out the small talk with whether I'm from that side of town (not really), whether I work around there (umm...sort of?), and then on to, "So, do you have kids or anything?"  What is it with people?  No, I have no kids.  Yes, I have anything.  Plenty of things.  Lots and lots of not-packed things.  It's Grover and the Everything in the Whole Wide World Except Kids Museum around here.  Sheesh.

3. I'm a little bit in love with this sentence from Harry Potter and the Giant Book That Jake Didn't Pick Up This Weekend So That I Now Have to Pack It: "Dawn seemed to follow midnight with indecent haste."  Now that's a good sentence.

4. Does it count as packing if I drink the tequila?  The bottle would no longer be sitting on top of my refrigerator, all unpacked-like.  Yes, I think it counts.

Ok, I'm off to pack!  (Note to Future Me: Screw you!  Hahahahaha!)

I have suspected this all along.

I have a rather painful bruise on my hip.  I figured out that it must have resulted from doing laundry yesterday.  That's right, I sustained a laundry-related injury.

Ok, so it's not so much from doing laundry as from schlepping my very full laundry basket a couple of blocks to and from my car.  Apparently my hips are not so sturdy as they once were.  I would not hesitate to show you a photo, but it doesn't look nearly impressive enough to give you the proper feel for its seriousness.  I fear it might be a contusion.

(This is an old inside joke between Amy and me.  One of her coaches told her that she must have a contusion.  We decided that a contusion sounded like something much more serious than it is, which is, essentially, a bruise.  So after that, whenever one of us had any kind of pain, the other one would say "Uh oh.  I bet it's a contusion."  To which the injured party would respond by going into hysterics about being too young to die, etc.)

In conclusion, housework is bad for you.

The End.

This post does not hug trees, but does offer them a polite handshake.

I'm just watching some Planet Earth.  The one about jungles, which I haven't seen before.  Do you think that Sigourney Weaver was their first choice to narrate, or did the first few people decline?  And who else do you think might have made the list?  I'd go with John Cusack, but that's just me.  Although it could have been kind of stellar with, say, Bill Clinton.  Or Ted Kennedy!  Ha!

And have you seen that the History Channel has its own series called The Universe?  As if someone at the History Channel was all "Planet Earth?  Screw that, we're doing the ENTIRE UNIVERSE!  That'll teach those cocky bastards at the Discovery Channel!"

I haven't watched The Universe because I assume it will be about, you know, space and stuff.  And I could not possibly care much less about space.  I like to look at stars and all, but I don't feel any sort of need to know anything about them.  I used to have to take students to the Air & Space Museum...yawn.  While the American History Museum served us tasty food and you know, had exhibits that related to what we were teaching these students, the Air & Space Museum only offered us McDonald's.  And to add insult to apathy, the security people there confiscated my scissors.  As if I were going to hijack the museum!  Really, I just wanted to get some work done while I was busy not learning about air or space and the students were educationally engaged in buying astronaut ice cream.

And despite my fascination with the Planet Earth documentaries, I also don't care that much about...the environment.  I KNOW.  It's not like I'm cheering for the expedited ruination of the earth.  Just, I can't get too excited about it.  I recycle, drive a small car, and try not to waste energy.  And, for whatever reason, I get really stressed out by people standing with the refrigerator door open.  Even if they are doing it on TV.  I don't know why.  So it's not that I'm opposed to environmentalism.  You just won't ever see me out rallying or whatever it is that the environmentalists do.  I did coordinate a trail clean up that was done by my division at my job in Austin, but I did not participate as we were warned that there could be snakes and scorpions present.  I prefer nature that will not bite or sting me, thank you.  And I'm sure the many people I signed up and emailed directions to did a tremendous job.  Go team.

Also, I blame the environment for perpetrating a fraud on all of us unsuspecting carnivores.  Lobsters are shellfish, eh?  Mmm...tasty, tasty fish.  Uh huh.  I have just learned while reading with a student that lobsters are related to spiders.  People, we have all been eating sea spiders dipped in butter!  While part of me realizes that shrimp are rather bug-like in appearance as well, I generally only see them in their fried state.  Which renders them not so much any sort of creature as just little nuggets of battered goodness.  That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

This post went awry somewhere, didn't it?  Anyway, I've got to get going.  Last Comic Standing is on and if there is one thing I do care deeply about, it is other people making me laugh.

Stupid cars and why they are stupid and expensive and also stupid

I just leased you your own parking spot, FORD FOCUS.  And this is the thanks I get.

I got in my car to go to work this morning.  There didn't seem to be any air coming out of the vents and yet the fan was on 1 and the AC light lit.  I turned it up to 2, same story.  3, ditto.  Turning it up to 4 (the largest number available to me) caused air to blast out, but the AC light to turn off, indicating what I could already feel, namely that this air was in no way conditioned. 

I could live without AC here.  I might look shiny and windblown, but it could be done.  And much more easily than when I went without AC for a summer in my '86 Celebrity which had 4 doors with hand-crank windows.  At least I can roll down both of my current windows easily from the comfort of my driver's seat.  And I have a sunroof now!

Except the defrost works the same way the air works - blast of non-cooled air when turned on 4.  Nothing otherwise.  At some point I might need some defrosting, no?

Which means taking my car in to some person who will be condescending and possibly dishonest and handing it over for an indeterminate amount of time and getting home and around and back to the car place somehow and then paying lots and lots of money.

When I mentioned this tale of woe to my father, what did he say?  "All cars need work from time to time."  Sure, Dad, take the car's side.  Did the Focus buy you a cool Remember the Oilers t-shirt for Father's Day?  I didn't think so.

I hate owning a car.  This one has been far less trouble than the '94 Saturn of Doom, but still.

I was pretty happy to not have a car at all when I lived in New York, although the whole "no more large and unanticipated expenses!" plan didn't really pan out, as I wound up paying a large and unanticipated sum of money to have my wisdom teeth removed.  As much as I do not enjoy the car repair scenario, it does narrowly edge out having objects ripped out of my head.

And that, folks, is just about as Pollyanna as I can get for you today on this subject.

Ford Focus, I will deal with you later.

Harry Potter and the Glorious Geekend

So, how was your weekend?  Pretty geeky over here.  By which I mean, awesome.

On Friday night, I saw the newest Harry Potter movie, Harry Potter and the Red-Haired Twins Who Are Now Old Enough to Not Make Me Feel Like a Dirty Old Woman.  Was that not the title on the poster?  Anyway, it was quite enjoyable and, since I never get around to rereading the books before I see the movies and have completely forgotten what happened, still suspenseful for me.  Two thumbs up.

On Saturday, the newest book came out.  Yes, I could have pre-ordered it online and it would have come directly to me, but then I would have had no excuse to go to Target on Saturday.  And I had only previously been there twice last week, so clearly I needed stuff.  By the time that I got home, unpacked my purchases, ate some lunch, and talked to my sister, I didn't get started on the book until sometime around 3:30 or 4:00.  Then I finished the book at 2:15 a.m. and went to bed.

Yep, 759 pages in roughly 10 1/2 hours.  First, let's all remember that while long, it is still a children's book.  And I did nothing else during that time.  I fired up iTunes, sat on the couch (which, while many things, portable, cheap, sage green, is not what you might call cushy or comfortable) and read.  I even ate dinner while reading.  And I use the word "dinner" here in the loosest possible sense, as evidenced by the trace amounts of peanutbutter and blackberry jam visible on pages 322-327.

Today though (Sunday) I have no Harry Potter-related plans.  I mean, I did dream about Harry Potter this morning, but that happens anytime I read fiction before bed.  My writer's brain continues the story, even if I have finished the book.  This normally tends to lead to a pretty bad night's sleep since I wind up having lots of short book-related dreams that I then wake up from over and over.  It wasn't too bad this time, but I still won't make a habit of this kind of thing.  (Although I am getting this book tomorrow, so I will most likely already make an exception this week.)

I've been redeeming my coolness so far today by watching some good Discovery Channel and National Geographic.  What?  All of the cool kids watch educational TV.  Everyone I consider cool anyway.  Do you think my view of cool is slightly skewed?  I slept in past Meet the Press this morning, but not to worry, I can catch it later tonight.  And I have The War Room from Netflix.  Tim Russert, Bill Clinton, and James Carville all in one day!  Wait, is that geekier than two days of Harry Potter?  It's not like I'm writing some sort of Harry Potter meets James Carville fan fiction or something.  (Harry Potter and the Cajun Goblin, I think that would be called.  I think this because of a certain resemblance I see between James Carville and the Green Goblin.  Not that I've put much thought into that or anything.)

I've also got to clean my apartment at some point today since my mom is coming tomorrow.  I phrase it that way not because my dad is not coming with her, but because the cleaning is in no way necessitated by him being here.  There would have to be a serious level of squalor before he would notice.  But first, I think I'll take the other gigantic hardcover book in my possession and head to the park for a while.

You shouldn't feel bad if your weekend can't compete with mine for sheer awesomeness.  I think we can all agree that I set the bar pretty high with this one.

How did he know?

Same kid.

Him: This guy is in jail.  He isn't happy.

Me: I don't think I'd be happy either if I were in jail.

Him: You're in jail too.

Me: Me?  What did I do to get put in jail?

Him: Drinking too much coffee!

Busted.  Take me away, officer.  Because if drinking too much coffee is wrong, then I don't want to be right.

This represents a new low for me, I think*

When I said I was staying here in Madison, I obviously didn't mean here in my same apartment.  No, that would be far too easy.

The thing is, while superadorable and all, my current apartment does not have any off-street parking.  Which is not such a problem now, but once all of the college students come back and there is...whimper...snow, finding a spot will not be easy or fun.  Also, I just got my third parking ticket in less than two months, this one for parking less than two inches from another car.  Who knew that was a thing?  I did not.  And that car was on the end.  I was being considerate and not parking in the car in front of me.  They charge you $20 for this sort of consideration here, FYI.

So my options were to stay here and rent a parking spot a couple of blocks over, or pay $65 more per month and move into an apartment in the building that is actually right next to that parking space.  And has laundry facilities, unlike my current building.

I walked in with the leasing agent, saw the filthy blue industrial carpet, and was ready to turn back around until she said those three little words: "new hardwood floors".  As in, installed before I move in.  I'm listening.  Then there was the small matter of the giant fireplace.  And the built-in bookshelves.  And the whole place being above ground, unlike my current semi-subterranean place, which is also a Cell Phone Reception Free Zone.  (Seriously.  Ask anyone who has attempted to speak to me and had their call dropped anytime I moved from the one square foot of Somewhat Decent Reception Area that requires me to sit on my kitchen table in order to talk.)

I won't miss that about this place.  Or the view from my living room window of the undercarriage of a Saturn station wagon.  Or the pipes along the ceilings absolutely everywhere.  When Jake came over, he said they give the place...character.  In every room, he'd say, "look, more...character." 

I am engaging here in a practice known as manclogging, in which you make yourself feel better about the loss of something by dwelling on its negative qualities.  It was so named by some friends of mine before I knew them.  They consoled one girl that a certain guy wasn't all that desirable anyway, in part because he constantly wore some embarrassingly ugly manclogs, and the expression was born.  It can be used as a verb, as in "Manclogging my apartment makes me less sad about giving up my separate eat-in kitchen" or as a noun, as in "the total lack of bathroom storage is a real manclog of this place."  (Caution: You may try this at home, but DO NOT preemptively manclog.  The guy/apartment/job/etc. must be definitively out of the picture before you begin, lest you talk yourself/your girlfriend out of something that you could have had/are stuck with after all.)

A weird thing about me is that the much larger size of the new apartment was not really a plus in its favor.  I like small spaces.  My current living room is pretty much perfect, in my opinion.  Cozy and all.  I'm not at all sure how I'll fill all of my new space, not to mention the two additional bookshelves that I'm about to have.  I get my books from the library because then they are free and I don't have to move them twelve times in eight years.  But if you have borrowed a book from me at any point, now would be a good time to return it.

And if you're interested in lugging my stuff a couple of blocks over, I'm looking at August 12.  Everyone is welcome (to move my stuff)!

*I think this might be the shortest amount of time I've lived anywhere, although I did only live with my friends Don and Sherri for a couple of months when I moved back to DC from NY.  Me renting their spare room for dirt cheap was supposed to be a nice moneysaver for me and moneymaker for them until they moved back to upstate New York five months later.  Then Sherri got a great job offer there a couple of months early and I had to move again sooner than I had planned.  So that one was not even my fault.

You didn't think of a title either, did you?

Let's say you've decided to spend your beautiful Sunday afternoon on a long walk and hanging around the park in the sunshine.  You have been remarkably responsible by applying plenty of spf 45 sunblock and wearing a tube top so as not to get tan lines that are incompatible with the strapless dress that you'll be wearing in Amy's wedding (which is the best bridesmaid dress ever, if you do say so yourself, which you do, and it's a good thing since you yourself picked it out).  You even thought to loop the wire between your earphones behind your head so you wouldn't get a skinny little line from it across your chest and neck.  You were on top of this visible tan line prevention thing.

Maybe you could have thought at some point to TAKE OFF THE GIANT SUNGLASSES.  Dumbass.

Maid of Honor, Incognito.

Amy: I promise that on your wedding day I will not stay in bed enough extra minutes to leave myself no time at all to do anything presentable with my hair like I did today.  Also, this is the necklace I told you about.  Is it ok?

Wednesday Afternoon Where I Live

Political Geek HQ right down the street.  And so pretty!

Who needs DC?  You know, daffodil-wise.

Sunny, 70s, with a nice breeze off the water?  Don't mind if I do.

Could somebody bring me an iced mocha and maybe massage my shoulders?  Because I think this day could get a tiny bit more perfect.

I was going to take a photo for you of a cloud that looked like a Snork, but my camera battery died, so you'll just have to use your imagination.

Admit it, you'd decide to stay here too.

That's right - for the forseeable future, I live in Madison.  The first person to use the word "snow" gets punched in the eye.

Start spreading the news

I'm leaving August 3 / I've got to be a part of it for a day and a half or so / New York, New York.

I haven't been to New York in three years, which obviously is unacceptable.  Sharon has been kind enough to get married in New Jersey this summer, giving me the perfect excuse to go.  What a pal. 

I'll get to the City Friday evening and spend Saturday there before leaving for the Garden State on Sunday for the noon wedding.  If I can get a double chocolate cannoli, some gnocci a la vodka, and a frozen hot chocolate in during that time, I will consider my trip a success.  (Ha!  I said A double chocolate cannoli!  As if I am only going to eat one!)  And, you know, Central Park, a Broadway show, and whatnot. 

I'm pretty excited about Sharon's wedding too.  Not only because I have never before seen Sharon in a dress, although that certainly sweetens the pot.  Mostly because Sharon has promised that this will be quite the cultural experience for me.  While I have attended roughly one million weddings, they have all been of a Christian persuasion.  This will be my first ever Jewish wedding and Sharon tells me that they are doing it "really Jewishly".  Awesome.

And then I leave New York the next day to fly to yet another wedding, this one in San Antonio.  In August.  So pleasant.  Sadly, I will not be flying for free, courtesy of the flight vouchers that Sharon generously offered me seeing as how Air Tran would only fly me to Dallas or Houston.  Stupid Air Tran.  Yeah, I said it.  But I will be dressed for free for this wedding since the red dress will be making its third trip down the aisle.  It is the Liz Taylor of bridesmaid dresses.

This wedding will also represent a new experience for me since it will be my first go at being a maid of honor.  There aren't, like, cleaning responsibilities associated with that, right?  Being maid of honor means that I will have fulfilled pretty much every female wedding role there is, except for bride.  I have also been a flower girl, rice girl (I handed out packets of bird seed), guest book attendant, reader, and bridesmaid.  If there were wedding action figures, I would have collected them all.

My second maid of honor experience will follow shortly thereafter at Amy's wedding in September.  Affording me the opportunity to fly to Portland, visit two new states (Oregon and Washington) and finally see the Pacific Ocean!

Really I am pretty much happy to be flying anywhere.  No matter how happy I may be with wherever I may live, I have a compulsive need to leave it fairly regularly.  But if my next friend who wants me to come to her wedding could get married in, say, Greece, all the better.

For what it's worth, he also said I was skinnier than his mom.

I was working with a seven year-old student (seven and three quarters, he would want you to know) when the inevitable question of my age came up.  He had already asked me in our previous session and when he guessed (I always make them guess) 200, I said yes, I was 200 years old and was a sea turtle.  He asked where my shell was and I said that I had to leave it at home or people would know I was a sea turtle.  I was in disguise.  We discussed my sea turtleness for quite some time, but he didn't entirely buy it and he asked again on Thursday how old I was.

He guessed 18 this time, God bless him, and finally upped it enough to get to my actual age.  This is always followed by the question about whether I am married and/or have kids.  So I was prepared for that, but was pleasantly surprised.

Student: So that means you have...a driver's license?

Me: YES!  (internally: FINALLY!  One I can say yes to!)

But later that hour, he did get around to asking whether I had kids and I said no.  Then he realized that I couldn't have kids since I'm not married.  (Right...yeah, that's how it works.)  He asked if I wanted to get married and I said "someday". 

And then he asked: What if someday everyone hates you?

Well then.  Probably under those circumstances I wouldn't get married, would I?  Among all of the potential impediments to my hypothetical future marriage, everybody hating me had not entered my mind as a possibility.  On the upside, my student did assure me that he didn't think he would hate me. 

One down.  Everyone else to go.

They also provide a good quad workout if you do a lot of stairs in them.

I mentioned that I was seeing my friend Jennie last weekend.  Anytime Jennie and I get together, only one thing can happen: shopping.  We are particularly good (dangerous?) shopping friends since we always encourage each other to buy anything that we are even considering.  Extremely helpful of us, right?  This was never more true than when we were in college and had no money.  One of us, in order to ease the guilt of having spent more than was probably advisable, would convince the other to buy something of equal or greater value.  This was to the extent that Jennie's mom actually had a nightmare about us shopping together and buying tons and tons of sweaters.

One time we decided that we should do something different for once and we went camping.  Let's just say that it did not go well.  There was rain, a leaky tent, and a raccoon stealing our food.

So on Friday, we returned to our natural habitat, the mall.  We were remarkably fiscally responsible despite having more disposable income than we did in the old days.  What we did both discover were these shoes at Sears:

They were very reasonably priced and are surprisingly comfortable.  And yes, I bought them in both black and brown.  Any bets on how long it will be before I show up somewhere wearing one of each color?  Before you put your money on anytime terribly soon, you should know that I managed to own identical boots in black and brown for several years without wearing a mixed pair out of the house.  Then again, that probably just means that I'm about due.

Don't worry though, Jennie's Mom.  We didn't buy any sweaters at all.

Insert tired "you like me!" joke here.

Internet, I won something!  And no, I am not referring to the many notifications of various fabulous winnings (just give us your credit card info and social security number!) that I receive daily in my email.  I mean I won an Internet award!  For doing something stupid and then telling you about it!

Masked Mom picked me for her Perfect Post award for June for my post about my couch.  I thanked her and said that it was nice that my idiocy could help anyone out, even if it were only in the form of amusement.  This makes me especially happy, given that I have enough of these posts to create an entire category called I do stupid things.  Because when I do stupid things, my first impulse is to tell no one.  This is followed immediately by the realization that of course I must post it here.  I am nothing if not a clown for the Internet's entertainment.

Also, I am just generally that hard up for material.  I swear, I can't trip on the sidewalk without thinking, "Finally, something to write about!"  So on that note, I would also like to thank Masked Mom most heartily for giving me a topic for this post.  Because I really had nothing at all of interest to say today, and then I got her email.  So if you like new posts, you should thank her too.