How are you today? I'm superfantastic.

Having my cake and anti-histamines too.

I have some kind of cold or allergy business going on at the moment.  It's not serious - just some post-nasal drip nastiness which is causing some throat swelling and soreness.

Some wooziness too, as I discovered in the soup aisle of the grocery store today.  One minute I was thinking about how tragic it is that Campbell's is apparently no longer making double noodle and the next minute I was experiencing some concern about my ability to remain upright.  Not to worry, I walked it off.  I mean, I pretty much stood there until the spinny sensation stopped, but then I just kept shopping.  I can't be sidelined that easily.  I am the Brett Favre of grocery shopping.  Except without the stubble.  Well, unless you count my calves.

I decided to be responsible and wait to go grocery shopping until after I had eaten lunch so I wouldn't make any inadvisable impulse purchases just because I was hungry.  This seemed like a good idea, but then while I was eating lunch I saw a commercial for that chocolate caramel cake bowl thing that you heat up in your microwave.  And I decided that I needed some of that.  FOR MY SORE THROAT.

Did you know that once you finish microwaving that ooey gooey goodness you have to let it stand for five entire minutes before you can eat it?  If I had any self-control, Betty Crocker, I wouldn't have bought a microwavable bowl of empty calories in the first place, would I?

I have to say, I do recommend it, lag time notwithstanding.  It would have been better with some milk, but I didn't buy any.  Because milk increases mucous production and I'm all stocked up for mucous at the moment, thanks.

My plans for the immediate future involve throwing back a Benadryl cocktail and making sure I wake up in time for my haircut at 2:00 tomorrow afternoon.  I'm a big believer in sleeping it off.  I'm pretty sure I'll feel better tomorrow.  At the very least because I will no longer resemble a 70s housewife.  And really, isn't that the very foundation of wellbeing?

In order to maintain your sanity while unemployed:

• You MUST leave the house at least once a day.
• So, for example, if you have three errands to do, you want to do one per day. Efficiency is no longer your friend.
• You should shower every day, but feel free not to blow dry your hair. Now is the time to enjoy having no need of being coiffed, as you hope that this freedom will be short-lived.
• Become one with your pajamas. Taking them off before noon is not encouraged.
• You probably shouldn’t go to Target. At all.
• Under no circumstances should you allow yourself to become sucked into an America’s Next Top Model marathon on MTV. You will feel the IQ points slowly draining away.
• The only daytime programming that will not make you want to claw your eyes out or cause you to become stupider is whatever is on HGTV. It may also inspire you to rearrange your previously awkwardly-arranged living room. You will be thankful.
• You have got to mute the iPod Nano commercial or the Feist song will cause you to lay awake nights, cursing its brain-melting catchiness
• You should not yet begin to entertain thoughts of signing up for clinical studies. It has only been three weeks. Get a grip.
• Get your damn hair cut. Nobody is going to hire you looking like Carol Brady.
• Stop blogging already and write another cover letter.  Slacker.

TA-DAAAAAA!!!

How do you like me now, Internet? If you’re reading through Bloglines or something, click on through, because it has suddenly gotten very stylish around here.

What we have here is of course Birthday Present #3, a total site redesign. You’re understanding more now how I managed to be so ok with turning 30, aren’t you? If there are presents this good to be had, who wouldn’t want to turn 30?

I tell you what, Alan is one handy guy to have around. In addition to the obvious web design skills, he also possesses IT skills (my wireless router hooked up in roughly 1/1000^th the time it would have taken me), automotive skills (checking…you know…car stuff and also duct taping parts to my car as needed) (I wish I were making that last part up), and handyman skills (assembling and fixing furniture, figuring out how to install my window AC unit in my new crank windows – if this had been left up to me, it would have just been very warm in here for a month now).

I’m certainly not one of those girls who has always had a boyfriend. In fact, the word “rarely” comes to mind. So I suppose it’s possible that this is the standard having-a-guy-around experience, but I don’t think so. I think I hit the jackpot here.

I guess we all did, seeing as how we’re all now benefiting from the man’s skills. Can you believe that we lived with that boring old template for two entire years? Thank goodness that’s over now.

And we have features! Things are all kinds of pretty and user-friendly and sort of moved around. Go ahead, poke around a little. Get a feel for the new place.

You should also feel free to leave a comment telling Alan how brilliant and talented he is.

Oh, and don’t worry. The design may be professional, but the content will remain sophomoric as always.

Got better.

Reasons why I am less crabby today:

1. No job rejections all day yesterday.  Also no calls about interviews or anything, but no news, while not good news per se, is at least not bad news.

2. I managed to apply for a job yesterday in under an hour.  This was mostly because the cover letter that I wrote on Wednesday covered almost everything for this one, so it only needed minor tweaking.  Still, that's got to be a new record for me.

3. It's almost the weekend.  But Lori, you say, You have no job.  How can it possibly make a difference to you whether it's the weekend?  Well, curious friend, the coming of the weekend means football, doesn't it?

4. Birthday presents are paying off.  A Target gift card, in the form of the perfect jeans for me.  After much searching and frustration and rending of garments, I found them right there at my second home.  And in the Juniors section no less!  I had some concern that I would be carded at the check out and forced to put them back.  But I made it out of the store with them and they are pretty outstanding and I may have to go back for a second pair before they stop having them.

5. Also a Borders gift card.  I didn't have anything in mind, but even if I hadn't come out with anything, it would have been worth it just to have an excuse to go in.  Even though I wound up picking out a book within seconds of walking in the door (a quote from Anne Lamott on the cover is pretty much all of the recommendation that I require) I spent probably an hour just wandering around, breathing in the happy that comes of being surrounded by books.

6. Madison Friend Katie has offered to take me out drinking Sunday night for my birthday.  And since she's off Monday as of course am I, and we can walk back to my place, there's no need for anyone to be overly responsible.  Nice.

Happy weekend, everybody!  Enjoy the football.

Yes, it looks like I have enough of these kinds of posts to create a whole new category.

Things that are currently making me crabby:

1. Yet another “we had many qualified candidates” letter.

2. The way that it takes me an ENTIRE DAY to write a cover letter that I’ll begin to consider submitting.

3. My toilet has been running for about three hours now and making growly noises and I haven’t heard back from anyone about coming to fix it despite the fact that there seem to have been maintenance people working in my building non-stop for two weeks now.

4. Noisy maintenance people making noise all day for the past two weeks.

5. Roofers blocking my ability to park in my parking space (which, if you’ll recall was the entire reason for moving here and paying higher rent) twice in one week.

6. The roofer coming in on Monday to apologize to me, making me feel guilty for giving him the Bitchy Stare of Death while walking in from the street.

7. Women who think that women aren’t qualified to be president on the basis that they are women. Because women are the weaker sex and too nurturing and emotional for the job. I don’t care what you think of a particular woman candidate, but to discount your entire gender as unqualified is really just incomprehensible to me.  (I just read on her website that she  said that women are the physically weaker sex, but that was edited.  Except what does physical strength have to do with a person's ability to be a strong president?  Let's ask FDR.)

8. Not only is it incomprehensible, but totally inconsistent with history. Did anyone ever accuse Margaret Thatcher of being too nurturing or emotional? They called her the Iron Lady, not the Maternal Lady or the Weepy Lady.

9. There is no chocolate in my house and the free wine has not yet begun to arrive.

10. Having all of the time but none of the money necessary to go and see my new nephew.

At least Roary is there on my behalf.

(This post was not written as an excuse to insert this photo, but once I got it from Dawn, I could not help including it.  Anybody want to complain? I am not too nurturing to deal with you.)

Breaking News

The nephew of the future is here today! Owen Wayne Graham was born at 7:56 p.m. He’s healthy and, I’m told, completely adorable. I have long suspected this.

I’ll post a photo as soon as someone emails me one of the billions of pictures my mother will have taken by the time the hospital forcibly removes her from the premises. I know, all of you males out there are already rolling your eyes and mentally going into your “all babies look alike and resemble old men/gerbils” litany, but I DON’T CARE.  All of you girls want to see pictures, don’t you? That’s what I thought.

Welcome to the world, little one.  I can't wait to meet you.

Turning thirty is like Pandora's box of chocolates.

Thirty feels...remarkably like 29.

But 29 with all of the fun birthday accoutrements. Cards! Phone calls!  Texts! Dinner out (mmm…couscous, the starch so nice they named it twice!) with dessert (mmm…cappuccino Kaluha ice cream graham cracker whipped cream pie thing) followed by drinks (mmm…vodka) and jazz.

While walking between the restaurant and the bar, we overheard yet another fascinating conversation on the street.  Did you know that the lesson behind the myth of Pandora's box is that when you open a box, you never know what you're going to get?  Much like the lesson behind this story is that if you walk around where there are drunk college students, you never know what totally wrong information you're going to hear proclaimed as fact.

One of my birthday gifts from Alan was supposed to be, finally, a game of Trivial Pursuit. We’ve been dancing around this for months. And by “dancing around this” I mean that I’ve been talking a whole lot of smack, despite the fact that I will almost certainly lose. Except we are both old now and after all of the preceding festivities, we were not capable of the level of alertness required for a proper Trivial Pursuit match. I will make sure I get a raincheck and will report back to you with the results. Unless I lose, in which case, we will never speak of it again.

Another of my gifts is a membership to a wine of the month club. Hot damn! The gift that keeps on giving. Giving TWO BOTTLES OF WINE EVERY MONTH, to be exact. Perhaps by the end of the membership I will no longer look at a winelist with the same totally bumfuzzled expression I wear when looking at my car’s engine. But even if I don’t learn anything, I still get to drink lots of free wine. Cheers!

There was one last gift which is…coming soon to a blog near you! Oooh, a cliffhanger! Stay tuned, boys and girls.  You won't want to miss it.

Requiem for a Decade

I've got less than two days remaining in my twenties.  This comes as something of a shock to me.  I don't feel old enough to be thirty.  And yet, I feel far more than ten years removed from my teenage self.

At nineteen, I was a junior in college.  I had never lived outside of Wisconsin.  Never lived alone.  Never worked a full-time job.  I had no idea how wonderful and scary and mundane and extraordinary life on my own was going to be.  But nineteen year-old me had a plan.  She was pretty sure she knew how the future was going to work, because she was going to make it so.  She was right about the part where I moved to DC, but that was about it.

My twenties taught me that plans only get you so far.  And that letting go of those plans can be the brave and better thing to do.

Did I ever tell you that I went to grad school?  I went to George Washington University for two semesters in the evenings while I worked full-time during the day.  I'm glad I went because it would have been a lot harder to up and move to DC with no job if I hadn't had grad school to motivate me.  But I wish I had trusted myself when I knew, after a semester, that it wasn't what I wanted to do.  I could have saved myself a lot of time, stress, and $2,500 if I hadn't stubbornly gone back for that second semester because I didn't think I could drop out, lest everyone think I was a quitter.

My twenties taught me to loosen up.  And to stop caring so much about what everybody else thinks.

I'm still working on that, but it's a lot better than it was.  This is one of the primary advertisements you get from people over thirty who are trying to talk you into being ok with this particular milestone.  They say that in your thirties you become a lot more comfortable in your own skin and stop caring so much about what other people think.  I don't know if that's true or not, but I guess I'm about to find out.

I really hope it is.  I don't want to care what anyone else thinks of me being thirty and still lacking in direction.  I want that to bother me because it bothers me, not because other people might judge me.  I want to be sure that I'm applying for the jobs I'm applying for because I think I want them, not because of how they'll look to other people.  I don't want to take on anyone else's worries about where all of this is going.

My twenties taught me to be ok with, even enjoy, uncertainty.  And that most people won't understand that.

Not knowing what the future holds can be scary, yes.  But it can be exhilarating too, if you look at it the right way.  And no matter how you look at it, it's true for all of us.

I didn't know at nineteen that things wouldn't work out the way I wanted them to.  I didn't know that I wouldn't get a job on Capitol Hill or finish my masters or get married and buy a rowhouse in Eastern Market by the end of my twenties.  But I also didn't know that I'd live in New York, or spend a month in Europe, or make friends from all over the country and the world.  I didn't know how much I'd grow to love my independence and learn to trust myself.

Who knows, in ten years, what I'll have to say about my thirties?  I hope I'll be able to say that my thirties taught me to be bold, that I learned how to stop letting fear of failure keep me from trying.  I hope I'll have accomplished things that I haven't even thought of yet.  I hope my thirties turn out to be as surprising, yet good, as my twenties have.

I think maybe I'm ready to let go of my twenties.  I enjoyed my them.  I lived the way I wanted, for the most part.  I learned a lot about the world and myself.  I crammed quite a bit into those ten years. 

Now, in a way, I sort of feel like I'm finally growing into my age.  I've always felt old for a twentysomething.  Maybe I'll feel more...in context or something in my thirties.  And, of course, my thirties are rapidly approaching, whether I think I like it or not.  It only makes sense to, if not welcome them, at least not struggle against the inevitable.

So, farewell twenties (although not until Saturday).  Thanks for everything.

A revealing peek into the exciting world that is late night at my apartment

I needed to take some Target Brand Ibuprofen for a headache. Dinner was a long time ago, so I figured I should eat a little something. But there are no crackers. There is, in fact, no food to speak of here, unless I wanted an entire Lean Cuisine Club Panini or a whole bag of microwave popcorn. I did have peanut butter. Fine, I thought, surely a spoonful of peanut butter would do the trick. Except then I noticed that there were really only a couple of spoonfuls of peanut butter remaining. And then I remembered about the Hershey’s Special Dark syrup in my fridge. I’ve been ignoring a persistent chocolate craving for the past couple of days, so I suppose what happened next was inevitable.

Yes, Internet, I poured the chocolate syrup directly into the peanut butter jar, mixed it up, and ate it with a spoon.

And I’m not sorry.

If you're happy and you know it, sit there quietly.

It was early Friday morning.  I was waiting in line to get on an airplane when the woman behind me started whistling some random series of notes that wasn't even really a song.  And I thought to myself:

Whistling in public should be outlawed.

At the very least, whistling before 10 a.m., I amended. 

Yes, I can be quite grumpy, and especially in the morning.  But I also do not feel that everyone ought to be subjected to whatever song a person may have in his or her head, particularly in a loud and high-pitched form.  I constantly have songs running through my head.  Quite often they are really annoying songs, and yet I keep them to myself.  You're welcome, society.  Please return the favor.

Maybe you'll think me less curmudgeonly for my anti-whistling stance once you've heard what happened shortly thereafter. 

A woman was sitting next to me on my second plane who, first of all, complained to someone on her phone about the window seat that she got with no seat in front of it because she couldn't put her carry-on bag on the floor and then she'd have to wait until we had taken off to get it out of the overhead compartment to get some work done.  I offered to switch her for my middle seat, which did have a seat in front of it and thus, underseat storage, but she didn't go for it.  She hogged that window and didn't even look out of it, even when there were mountains.  But I digress.

She had a soda can to dispose of and when the flight attendant didn't notice her holding it out, she WHISTLED AT HER. 

We live in a society where this behavior, while rude and degrading and horribly condescending, is still legal.  I'm making a little bit more sense now, aren't I?  It's not entirely about me just being crabby.

I mean, it's not like I want to outlaw rainbows and sunshine.  Well, not after 10 a.m. anyway.

Amy and Joe, sitting in a tree. Not literally, although it was not for lack of available trees to sit in.

Amy, my friend of almost 25 years, got married on Saturday.  She and Joe had their ceremony at Trillium Lake near Mt. Hood in Oregon.  It was beautiful, and more to the point, very much Amy and Joe.

Here's the wedding party at the ceremony site:

One of these things is not like the others, one of these things does not belong.  One of these kids is doing her own thing...

Failing to clear 5'6, that is, much less six feet like everybody else.  Amy's demand that I wear flip flops did not help matters in the height department.  Actually, this was an excellent idea on her part, seeing as how there was some trekking through the woods to be done.  They were sparkly flip flops, FYI, lest you think my feet weren't appropriately fancy.

It turned out to be well worth submitting myself to the iron fist of the bridezilla (she also MADE me pick whatever dress I wanted and do whatever I wanted with my hair) to get my bridesmaid gift, a quilt that Amy made for me.  I tell you, it pays to be friends with crafty people.

I considered bringing my new quilt along for the ceremony, seeing as how it looked like it might be chilly.  In fact, Amy and Joe prepared for all possible wedding weather scenarios:

Umbrellas!  Hand warmers!  Programs printed on fans!  All unnecessary, seeing as how it was sunny, somewhere around 70 and generally perfect.

After the ceremony, Amy's brother Jim and I discussed being the last two out of the Graham/Tessmer kids to be married.  We found it surprising, seeing as how we are clearly the best looking two.

Don't you think?

Amy and Joe's reception was at a restaurant at the base of Multnomah Falls.

We had lunch there and, in lieu of wedding cake, sunflower cupcakes.  This was an idea Amy and I discussed early on in her wedding planning and I was happy that she went with it, not only because it was distinctly Amy, but also because the frosting to cake ratio on a cupcake is much more favorable for a frosting fanatic such as myself.

The center of the sunflower there is fudge.  When I commented to Amy about how outstanding that was, she took a spoon, scooped the fudge center out of hers and gave it to me.  And that, folks, is called true friendship.

Happy wedding, friend, and a happy happy life with Joe.

That's Entertainment

Overheard while walking among the drunks downtown Madison around 10pm on Saturday:

How do I get to Madison?  Madison, the city.  Why are you running away?  Some people have no sense of humor!

Right.  Failing to laugh at your clever joke of asking how to get to Madison as you stand not fifty yards from the Capitol indicates that the rest of us have no sense of humor.

I AM TWENTY-ONE!  FIRST OF ALL, I AM @#$%ING TWENTY-ONE!

There didn't seem to be a second of all, and her compelling argument apparently didn't work on the bouncer since we saw her walking down the street later.  Surprising.

I can't believe you're still touching me.

Ummm...

I won't have my geekiness questioned.

Ok, that might not have been a random drunk person so much as it was...me.  Not drunk.  Also not tolerating any attacks upon the extent of my geekdom.

I know there were more that I'm forgetting.  Next time I'll be sure to take notes for you.  Except not this weekend since I'm off to the Pacific Northwest for Amy's wedding, and it's not going to be that kind of reception.  Although if it is possible to become inebriated off cupcake frosting, I will do my best to make it that kind of reception.

Elaborating.

We met in December.  Except we sort of met online last fall.  But there was this one time that we met about eight years ago when we were in college.  Tricky, isn't it?  Don't ask me how long we've been together because that answer is even more difficult to pin down than the first one.

So, Alan and I have a mutual friend.  As you already know, I've known Katie since high school and we are in near constant contact.  He's known her since college and they were good friends and have stayed friends all of these years.  So he and I have pretty much heard about each other through Katie for a decade now. 

Then there was this one time when we happened to be at the same place in Madison and I ran into Katie and he was there and our 21 year-old selves met.  (Do not mourn, Internet, for our lost years.  Our 21 year-old selves would surely not have been any kind of good match.)  When we re-met last fall, I recalled this first meeting and remembered about Alan one entire thing: that he had red hair.  He didn't remember it at all until he saw a photo of me from back then (when I looked different due to the curly hair) and recalled meeting me and thinking that I was a wallflower.  I'd be offended by this recollection if it weren't undoubtedly true.

Like Scotch, I am an acquired taste.  It takes a good five to ten years, apparently.

Then this happened in Katie's comments.  One rarely gets such offers, at least in my experience.  (Maybe you get them all of the time - I don't know.)  But suffice it to say, that got the emailing started, with a bit of a nudge from our good friend Katie.  And lo, it was good.  Intelligent conversation.  West Wing references.  A little flirting here and there.  But what could ever come of it?  He lived in Madison and I lived in Austin.  Just good harmless fun.

Then my company holiday party was coming up.  I mentioned in an email that there would be a cocktail dress.  Who knew that the words "cocktail dress" could be so powerful?  Not I.  So there was a visit.  And it was good. 

(This despite the fact that by the time I picked him up at the airport, the combination of nerves and allergy-related ear congestion made me entirely unable to either make conversation or really hear what he was saying.  Then I got us lost on the way to dinner.  Like, so lost that I had to pull the car over and get out a map.  If I made a better second impression than first, it couldn't have been by much.)

So then I came to Madison for a weekend.  In January.  And lo, it was ass-numbingly cold.  But somehow, still good.

Because, people, he cracks me up.  And he is enormously geeky, which I'm into.  (As Sharon told me, we geeks should only date within the geek race.)  Also tall, ginger, and handsome, lucky me.

And then May was approaching.  My job was ending, Amy was moving away, and there was nothing keeping me in Austin.  There was this summer teaching job in Madison and there were tons of cheap and cute sublets on Craig's List and it didn't involve committing to anything for more than a couple of months and so I moved.  And then I stayed.

So the experiment continues.  How long can a relationship between two confirmed commitment-phobes last? 

Once, I was at a Memorial Day picnic and my friend Kathryn, who also cannot catch, and I decided that we should enter the water balloon toss as a team because wouldn't it have been amazing if two non-catchers could win such an event?  (We didn't.  We were, in fact, the first team out.)  That's what we're kind of like - the two people impaired at the task attempting to be a team.  It's the Special Olympics of dating around here.

But so far, so good.