How are you today? I'm superfantastic.

A Lighter Shade of Pale New Year

I can’t tell you folks how excited I am this year about New Year’s Eve.  I don’t know about you, but I usually find it to be sort of a letdown.  But not this year!  This year it’s going to be great.

Because this year I will spend it with someone truly special.

Someone who makes me laugh.  Sometimes he even sings to me.  This will be my first New Year’s Eve with him and I know it will be one that I’ll never forget.  And we’re spending it in the romance capitol of the world: Milwaukee.

I’ll see you there, Jim Gaffigan.

What, you thought all it took was New Years to get me to gushing publicly about Alan?  Uh, no.  But rest assured, Alan will be there too, along with a whole bunch of other people.  Actually, this was the practically perfect Christmas gift I was telling you about.  I gave Alan two tickets to Jim Gaffigan’s New Year’s Eve show and told him he could take anyone he wanted.  As long as it was me.  And what do you know, he’s taking me.  Quelle surprise!

So after work, we’re off to Milwaukee to ring in the new year with the one living person who is even pastier than the two of us.  See you in 2008!

What I Did on my Christmas Vacation

by Lori Graham, age...whatever.

I went to Sea World.  Dawn and I rode in the very front of a fun roller coaster.

Owen and I spent some time chilling in our cool shades.  The chicks, they dig him.

Since it is my job to spoil Owen with sugary treats, I thought three months was totally not too early early to start him on funnel cakes.  Poor kid had been deprived of fried dough with powdered sugar for his entire life.

We went on the roller coaster again and saw Shamu.  It was a fun day.

The End

Merry Christmas, everybody!

Plus I got to wear flip flops today.

Yesterday, my day began at 4:45.  I am a firm believer that times beginning in 4 do not constitute Early Morning so much as Still Night.  But that's when I got up so I could be dressed, finished packing, and at Alan's by 5:45 for my ride to the airport.  Amazingly, we actually managed to have a conversation in the car at that unreasonable hour.  I think it might have even made sense.

Soon after, I boarded the tiniest plane I have ever personally seen.  We made it safely to St. Louis and were thanked for flying on American Connection, which we were reminded is part of the One World Alliance.  That name always sounds frighteningly Orwellian to me.  As if the One World Alliance, before too long, will be dictating our every thought and action.  The One World Alliance does serve Diet Dr Pepper on its flights though, making it the sort of totalitarian regime that I might be able to get behind.

In St. Louis, I had time to get an eggnog latte (see above re: getting up at 4:45) before boarding a normal-sized plane that would take me to San Antonio.  Oh look, I thought, I am in the window seat of the side with only two seats!  My favorite!  Except my row was full.  Full of a couple who gave me the puppy dog eyes about wouldn't I please trade seats so they could sit together.  Naturally, they decided to grab the aisle seat that one of them had and beg for my lovely window seat.  What they offered in return turned out to be a middle seat.  Directly in front of one screaming baby and one crying toddler.  And three rows back, which did not seem like a big deal until I was waiting for all eternity to get off the plane while needing desperately to pee.  At that point I began directing invisible hate rays toward the heads of the seat-stealing couple who were a good ten people ahead of me in line.  If you must sit together, couples of the world, you keep the crappier of your two seats and swap the better one.  Or you pull one over on a sleep-deprived sucker and just hope that karma isn't real.

As for me, I may not have gotten to look out the window or have access to either armrest for two hours, but I did get more than enough reward in the end.

Grammar Geek Wednesday: Keep your shirt on, Charlize Edition

As I said last week, it's getting difficult to think of things that you all haven't already covered for me.  Two of the things on my current list were use of the word "heighth" as pointed out by OCDMuch and "I could care less" as covered by Horrible Warning.

Height.  HEIGHT.  There's no h at the end.  Yes, width, depth, height.  English is screwy, granted, but it still deserves our respect.  Sort of like Willie Nelson or Canada.

And when people say "I could care less" what they actually mean is the exact opposite.  If I said I could care less about baseball, I would be lying.  I don't care at all about baseball and therefore could not possibly care any less. 

The one thing left on my list is yet another instance of people unknowingly saying the opposite of what they mean and it drives me insane.  Have you heard people say "I'll miss not seeing you"?  If they knew what they were saying, then this was not a compliment.  What this actually means is "I'll look back fondly on those times of not having to be around you."  Like when a co-worker you can't stand comes back to work from vacation and you miss not seeing them.  Wasn't it great when Annoying Co-worker wasn't here? you think to yourself, I miss that.

This last thing has nothing to do with grammar, but does fit into the category of things that bug me.  I was listening to my holiday playlist the other day on my iPod and came across the lyric "A child, a child shivers in the cold, let us bring him silver and gold."  Really?  If a child is shivering in the cold, wouldn't a better gift perhaps be, I don't know, A BLANKET?  As Charlize Theron points out in her nonsensical J'Adore Dior commercial, gold is cold.  Also that diamonds are dead, and while I hear the alliteration, I do think that proclaiming diamonds dead is a mite hasty.  Charlize sure seems mad about being dressed in that commercial.  Why so angry, Charlize?  You know, you could wear that perfume with your clothes and jewelry.  I suppose that the sight of Charlize stripping is supposed to make men run out and buy J'Adore for their wives and girlfriends due to some mental association they have formed between it and naked Charlize Theron.  I, for one, miss not seeing that commercial.

T-Minus

45 hours until I leave for Texas to visit Owen.  I believe other members of my immediate family may be there as well, but I'm not really sure.

Things I am looking forward to about my trip:

-Owen, obviously.  He came topside three months ago yesterday and I still haven't met him.  This is clearly unacceptable.  Fortunately, my brother and sister-in-law did not send me the most adorable picture ever of all time until this week.  Seriously, it's so cute it hurts a little, like the way that really good frosting sort of makes your teeth ache with its sugary goodness.  Yeah, that cute.

-Warm weather.  DO YOU HEAR ME, TEXAS?  WARM WEATHER.

-Three of my very favorite things in the world: friends, margaritas, and queso.  In that order, I think, although it's a tough call with the last two.

-Not doing any data entry for seven whole days.

-Antagonizing my mother.  It's one of my special gifts (just ask anyone in my family) which has been squandered in the past few months.  I mean, I do my best over the phone, but it's not the same when I don't get to see the face she always makes in response.

-My mother's cookies.  Fortunately, she's not petty and won't withhold cookies no matter how much I pick on her.

-My dad's stuffing.  Not that the Stove Top Stuffing I "made" for Thanksgiving wasn't delightful.  I guess I just don't really compare the two since I sort of consider boxed stuffing an entirely different group of food than real Dad-made stuffing.  You'd have to try it to really understand, except you can't have any since I am going eat it all.

-Conversations with my sister which would appear to the casual observer to be serious, but are instead entirely sarcastic.  You know, like this one.  While that one didn't last long due to its exceptional hilarity, we can normally keep these things going for a really impressive amount of time without cracking.

-The Trivial Pursuit Battle of the Sexes Grudge Match.  Christmas wouldn't be Christmas without heated geeky competition.  Just as the baby Jesus intended.  I meant to brush up on my baseball knowledge in preparation for this year's game, but unfortunately every time I begin to think about baseball I immediately fall asleep due to overpowering boredom.

-The Christmas Eve church giggles.  This is yet another tradition, normally involving my brother and me.  Last year, Dan couldn't be there, but Dawn made a good substitute for cracking ourselves up with inappropriate for church comments.  One of these years, my parents are going to stop allowing me to come along.

Things I am not looking forward to about my trip:

-Being up early enough to get to the airport before my 7 am flight.  (Also not looking forward to this: my ride to the airport, a.k.a. Alan.)

-The Texas allergy crud.  I predict I'll spend the bulk of my trip slightly high on Alavert.

-Having to reacclimate to the cold when I get back.  Boo, cold.

-The inevitable five pound (let's hope that's all it is) weight gain.  Notice how about half of the stuff in the Looking Forward To list involves fattening food.

Probably at some point I should begin packing.  And by "packing" I mean "throwing a bunch of dirty laundry in a suitcase along with some flip flops".  Did I not mention free laundry in the list?

For the moment though, back to data entry.  T-Minus 13 1/2 hours of that to go.

XOXO

Dear Bus Driver,

I smiled at you and said hello when I got on board.  You asked me what I was so smiley about this morning, which I thought was just a little bit of bus driver banter.  It looks like I might have been wrong about that.  It might have been more of an accusation than a question.

I paid and went all the way to the back so as not to take up any of the seats reserved for senior citizens and the disabled.  During my 30 minute ride, I saw plenty of people try to exit through the back door and then have to instead go to the front because the back door was lined up with a snowbank.  Some of these people rattled the door to get your attention or tried to force it open.  You even had to yell at one guy to get him to come to the front because he was not giving up on that back door.  I understand that you were frustrated with this. 

At the stop before mine, you lined up the back door with a good spot.  The one girl who was exiting was heading for the front and had to turn around and go to the back instead.  So when my stop came, I stopped at the back door to see whether I could get out there.  The light wasn't coming on, so I went to the front.

Where I found you sternly pointing at the front door.  The door which you refused to open until you had finished giving me a rather lengthy diatribe on how opening the back door into a snow bank messes up the bus's breaks.  I said "OK, thank you" and yet you still refused to open the door and continued your condescending lecture for quite some time.

Listen, I know that you wanted to say all of this to the door-rattlers, but you couldn't because it was a busy street with buses waiting behind you.  I know it had been building for a while and you saw a good opportunity, what with me getting out on a side street.  Clearly you were in a pretty foul mood by then anyway, judging by the way you honked twice at a car who was sitting on the side of a not busy and plenty wide street, not obstructing your way, then pulled up next to him (see, plenty of room to go around) to open your door and yell at him that he had to move.

But when I was headed into a temp job where everyone will speak to me in condescending tones for eight hours just because I'm a temp and the new girl and they think until I tell them otherwise that I'm in college, your assholery was really the very last thing I needed.  I hadn't even had any coffee yet, despite the fact that it was in my hand, because I was being an exemplary passenger and following the no eating or drinking rule.

Yes, you deal with a lot of irritating people at work.  Who doesn't?  I don't know why you can't deal with it like the rest of us stoic Wisconsinites.  You just stuff it down all week and then on Sunday, you turn on the Packers game and let all of that rage out on the refs and opposing team members who can't hear you anyway.  Four out of five psychologists recommend it as a healthy way to relieve stress.  I mean, I didn't ask any, but I assume.

I should be getting my car back today, so it looks like we won't be seeing each other again.  Thank God.

your former passenger,

Lori

Proper Prior Planning

From me!  But first, let me just explain that we'll hold off on the grammar until next week(ish).  All of you geeks with your excellent comments have gotten to all but one of the items on my current list.  (A list!  For I am forgetful!)  (Saved in Word!  For I lose pieces of paper!)

So allow me instead to regale you with some fascinating anecdotes of what I've been up to since the weekend.

Except the first one sort of starts on the weekend, when I had the forethought to buy a new hairdryer WHILE THE OLD ONE WAS STILL WORKING.  I've written before about how I kill hairdryers like Texas does convicts.  Usually I've had a roommate to mooch off until I could get to Target for a new one.  But when this one started to smell like burning (the first sign of imminent hairdryer demise) I realized that if it died, I would have no spare to borrow.  And then I'd go out in the cold with wet hair and catch my death!  Ok, not really, but I'd be extra cold, wouldn't I?  So I bought one on Saturday and my old one officially died yesterday morning.  Et voila, a whole extra hairdryer was all ready to go!  I forgot though that the old one was some sort of quiet tone something.  By comparison, the new one sort of sounds like a jet engine.  And there you have the story of how proper prior planning prevents pneumonia.  (You have to pronounce the p in pneumonia to make that work.  Thank you.)

I did not, however, plan ahead well enough on the boot waterproofing front.  I've been meaning to buy waterproofing spray ever since I bought the boots a week ago.  In none of the one million trips I made since then to Target, Shopko, Walgreens, two malls, and some grocery stores did I remember to buy any.  Yesterday though, it was at the forefront of my mind as I went into Walgreens with cold, wet feet where my boots had soaked straight through.  And wouldn't you know it, my boots and also feet were completely dry when I got to work this morning, despite the deep snow I tromped through on my way here from the bus.  I guess all that Kiwi Rain & Stain that I sold to people in my years at the Finish Line was not a totally useless add-on meant only to inlfate my sales after all!

So yes, I am taking the bus right now.  Yesterday was the day I finally got to take my car in for the coolant leak thing after a week of filling it at least once a day, usually while standing in a snow mound in my parking lot.  Naturally, yesterday was also a big winter storm.  Before I began my slow crawl of a drive from work to the garage, I got to fill my coolant while it was actively snowing.  Fun!  It did, however, let up in the time it took me to clear the snow and ice off my car.  I am what you might call a thorough car scraper.  It's one of my compulsions, like the way that I have to get peanut butter spread perfectly evenly on a slice of bread.  Why these things bother me and not the shoes scattered throughout my apartment, I do not know.

I dropped my car off with Jerry the Trustworthy Car Guy and got the bus home.  We picked up a bunch of high schoolers on the way and I was treated to some scintillating conversation.  First, one of them had a baby niece, but the girl's sister was not breastfeeding because her boobs never got big enough.  This led to a discussion of whether these girls thought their boobs could possibly get big enough.  (They all thought no.)  Then they moved on to the saga of J-Rod and Brittany.  See, they have broken up.  And it was posited, since one of them had seen J-Rod with red eyes, looking like he had been crying, that Brittany did the dumping.  While this was entertaining and all, it did not make me nostalgic for my days of spending lots of hours on buses with high schoolers.  This is mostly because where you have a busload of teenagers, at some point you're going to have a busload of teenagers singing Baby Got Back.

Yesterday, coincidentally, was the official Wisconsin Snowplow Driver Appreciation Day.  As a token of our appreciation, snowplow drivers, please accept this gift of round-the-clock work, beginning at three in the morning.  Thanks, guys!

In which I buy shoes. How unlike me.

Here are some things I did this weekend:

Battled Mothra in my bedroom.  It was harrowing.  I was planning to stand on a chair and hit it with shoe, until it occurred to me that putting my face that close to it practically guaranteed that it would fly at me before I could smush it.  So I threw shoes at it until I hit it and it fell on the floor, and then I smashed it with another shoe just to be extra sure that it was dead.  I did not even require the assistance of Godzilla.  The nation of Japan is now free to thank me with generous gifts of electronics and economy cars.

Bought pretty, pretty new boots.  I discovered when I went to change from my snow boots to my stiletto boots last Friday that the heel of my left boot was bent at a 45 degree angle.  Also the metal was sticking out the bottom.  Curse my rotten luck, I needed to go shoe shopping.  It was a hardship, but I persevered and got these on sale for $40 from $90.

Had an eggnog shake from Culver's.  Eggnog.  Frozen custard.  Enough said.

Watched yet another hokey Christmas movie.  I'm talking made for TV.  I don't watch made for TV movies at any other time of year, but I am a sucker for the schmaltzy Christmas movies.  Usually someone is forced to return home from New York/Los Angeles to the small town he or she left years ago.  This tends to be due to the death or sickness of a parent.  The person regains his or her holiday spirit while falling in love with an old high school flame or the new guy/girl in town.  It's all very heartwarming.  I am not proud of this.

Got the stinkeye from a salesperson at New York & Co.  They ask you for your phone number when you make a purchase.  This has also happened to me at other stores.  Does anyone ever give their actual number to these people?  Normally I just give a fake number.  I've also gotten away in the past with just saying "I don't have a home number."  I tried that on this girl and she just stared at me as if to say "So?"  I told her I wasn't giving her my cell number and she openly glared at me.  From now on, when they ask if they can get my phone number, I'm just saying no. No, you may not have my phone number.  The end.

Which seems like as good a way to end as any.

Lives in Infamy

Happy Birthday to my big brother, Dan!

Sure, Owen, you think he's funny now.

But give it thirteen years and you'll be asking him to drop you off three blocks away from school and to walk at least twenty yards behind you in the mall.  I guarantee it.

Grammar Geek Wednesday: Snow Advisory Edition

Ok, the snow advisory has nothing to do with the grammar.  But it has everything to do with my white-knuckled drive home from work last night.  I am not good at this anymore.   At least I have my Texas plates right now to make it look as if I have an excuse for driving like a grandma, but they expire at the end of the month, so I'll just have to re-learn winter driving by then.  It looks like I'll be getting even more practice on Thursday.  Stupid snow.  HATE.

So much so, in fact, that when I got in my car after work yesterday and Harry Connick, Jr. was singing Let it Snow, I thought three words that I never would have believed would cross my mind: SHUT IT, HARRY.

Bad impulse: Not buying the $40 snow boots I saw at the mall on Sunday because I had seen some for $20 at Target.  Yeah, every other woman in Madison saw them too and bought them before I made it there on Monday.  All they had left were two size nines, which is a half size too small.

Good impulse: Going back into my apartment this morning after clearing off my car to get dry jeans, socks, and shoes to change into when I got to work.  I can't tell you how pleased I am with that decision since my jeans were wet to the knee, my boots soaked through, and my socks both wet and cold.

But on to grammar.  Today, let's talk about words that incorrect people are commonly substituting for the words they should actually be using.  Fun!

Should have, people, should HAVE.  Not should of.  Or would of or could of.  It's have in every one.

Similarly, it's all of a sudden, not all the sudden. 

Also, you toe the line, you don't tow it.  The expression implies stepping up to a line, not hauling it anywhere.

And finally, let's look at a holiday example.  Ooh, seasonal!  You're to deck the halls with boughs of holly, not balls of it.  A bough is a branch.  Makes sense, right?  (Both of my former roommates would want me to point out here that Holly is the prettiest sight you'll see.)

I know I can safely ask for even more comments on this and not be disappointed.  Lord, but you people are geeks.  I love it!

In which I say nice things about winter. No, really.

But first, allow me to point out that we are getting an additional three to five inches of snow today.  Powdery snow, they tell me, not that icy crap from the weekend.  Still.  That Al Gore is full of shit.  WHERE IS MY GLOBAL WARMING, AL GORE?  I WILL TAKE IT NOW.

So I thought I'd try to think of some good things about winter.  It won't be easy, but I've got to challenge my brain somehow and this temp job is clearly not the way.

1. Christmastime, obviously.  Except this only gets you through the first month, meaning that we need more things.

2. Bowl games, NFL Playoffs, and the Superbowl.  But again, this only gets us through so much winter.  This might be harder than I thought.

3. Flannel sheets.  I put mine on Sunday night and also commenced with the sleeping in flannel pajamas.  I am always the tiniest bit concerned about this combination.  If I toss and turn too much, could I create a spark?

4. Coming in from the cold and getting into a hot shower, then proceeding directly to cozy sweats or pajamas.  If a blanket, the couch, and hot chocolate are involved, so much the better.

5. My snottiness seemed to intensify yesterday, proving I believe that I am in fact allergic to winter.  This is not a good thing, but the sexy Kathleen Turner voice that I developed overnight was.  Sadly, it seems to have normalized now, but it was gravelly while it lasted.

6. Sledding.  I haven't actually participated in sledding in more years than I can remember, but I did, while in Colorado a few years ago, participate in the granddaddy of all sledding-related activities: snowtubing.  I thought that this was going to be essentially sledding, just on an inner tube, something that we did as kids right in our hill of a front yard.  But this was extreme snowtubing.  Xtreme, even.  This is more ski slope than hill, and they even have a contraption that pulls you back up, right in the comfort of your tube, thus eliminating the real downside of sledding, the walking back up the hill.  This has to go on my top five list of most fun things I've ever participated in.  Oooh, I could add some photos when I get home.

7. Once my car warms up, I shoot all that beautiful heat directly toward the floor and feel my feet thaw out, despite the fact that I had not even realized they were cold.  Of course, having conscious awareness that my feet are cold would be like having conscious awareness that I am breathing.  Which is to say, it would be constant.

8. And the very best thing about winter?  When it's over.  After a real, northern winter, those first few nice days are the best thing ever of all time.  You cannot truly appreciate nice weather until you have suffered through what felt like it would surely be never-ending cold and miserableness.

That's all I can come up with.  Got anything else for us?  I'm trying to find a silver lining here and am coming up aluminum, at best.

Let it stop! Let it stop! Let it stop!

That's the title of the post I started writing last night about all of the lots of snow that we got this weekend.  I've just deleted everything I had written, but let me catch you up quickly: We had lots of snow this weekend.  Boo, lots of snow.  I hate you, lots of snow.  I hate driving in you.  I hate walking in you.  I hate the way that you have turned my block into an icy slope of treacherous doom.

See, the impulse to move somewhere with off-street parking was an excellent one.  As I have watched people shoveling their cars out of spots on the street, I have become ever more grateful for my little parking lot.  However, my little parking lot is at the end of my little dead end street, meaning that we are not a priority for plowing.  It also happens to be at the bottom of a hill, making the drive up it in its current slick state a bit of an adventure.  I was not entirely sure I would reach the top this morning.  The Focus is not equipped for this sort of thing.

Speaking of the Focus, it has decided that now is a fine time to begin giving me problems.  Back before Thanksgiving the heat stopped working, which obviously, now that the weather has gotten frightful, represented a big problem for me.  Alan noticed over Thanksgiving weekend that it was also looking like it was going to overheat.  He opened the hood, quickly discovered that the problem was a total lack of coolant, and filled it with some he had at home.  And presto, heat!  And a totally free and effective car repair.  Let me tell you, I was experiencing some stress over the getting my car to the shop, getting home, and getting to work and back while it was being fixed, along with how exactly I was going to pay for repairs.  But lo, a Thanksgiving miracle!

Which lasted just over a week.  I still had no warm air by the time I got to work this morning, so I checked out the coolant situation (getting my cream-colored mitten quite filthy, might I add) and noticed that yet again, I am out.  Well, crap.  I can fill it myself (what is it with me and coolant?) but obviously there's a more serious problem here.  So I'll just have to figure out the getting around sans car thing and hope for a quick and inexpensive repair.  First, I've got to get groceries.  Not only do I not have any food to speak of, but I used the end of the coffee this morning.  Obviously, this represents emergency conditions.

Everybody think melty thoughts.  And, uh, can I bum a ride to work?