A moving story, Part 3

(Part 1 here.)
(Part 2 here.)


Many thanks to the first two commenters on Part 2 for giving me such a good jumping off point for where I was going with the pregnancy thing I mentioned at the end of Part 3. You both think just like me, as it turns out.
In reverse order:

For the sake of a good story, we'll just ignore the fact that pregnant does not mean infirm or unfit to work.

That's true, and I know it intellectually just as well as any other good former women's studies minor. Women can do physical labor, even while pregnant, and whether they can handle certain tasks at any point, for any reason, pregnant or not, is really a matter for them and their doctors, not me or anyone else, to decide. Where the hell do I get off? For that matter, old also does not mean infirm or unfit to work. Like I said, ageist, sexist. I had all of these thoughts immediately after I realized she was pregnant.
Because also:

Oh dear. You definitely don't want your moving crew to be less physically fit than you are... you might feel obligated to help them carry something. You might as well just rent your own truck at that point ;-)

See, you'd be hard-pressed to find a moving crew less physically fit than me personally. And also, I am a bad person. Because you would think that if I had sexist thoughts about my pregnant mover, they would come from some misguided patriarchal sense of protection of the delicate flower, some concern for her or her fetus, some sense of obligation to help. They mostly did not. They came from here (not in the comments, this is just in my own head):

If she miscarries, with only herself and her dad doing my move, 500 miles away from where they live, I am never going to get moved. Does that make me a bad person? I am a bad person.

Luckily, I had plenty of time to think about how bad a person (and feminist) I was, because "no rush" meant a lot of things besides showing up an hour late. It meant taking hours and hours to get most of my stuff into the truck. But I am getting ahead of myself.
I should say that, unfit as I am, I have always, before now, rented or borrowed a truck to move. The biggest reasons I did not do that this time were:

• the drive was so long and I needed to move my car, too
• my house was not ready to be moved into
• my new job was willing to help with my moving expenses
• I had, since my last move, acquired a large, heavy desk that was a family heirloom and that I was sure I could not move myself without breaking. The Guy's moving company had already moved it safely several times.

Part 4 coming soon, I am sure. You still with me?

A moving story, Part 2

(Part 1 here.)

You may recall that when we left off, there was a plan:

The movers would show up at my house between 8 and 8:30 on a Friday. They'd be able to move me out in about an hour and a half (which I thought was optimistic, and so rounded up to three hours) and then hit the road. I would spend the rest of the day cleaning my apartment with a friend (we'll call her Bread Truck Grrl) who'd fly down to help me drive my car up. Then I'd go out to dinner with two of my close friends, BTG and I would crash at their house, and we'd hit the road bright and early Saturday morning. My new job would start on Tuesday, I'd close on my house on Wednesday, my things would be delivered on the following Saturday.

OK. So. I prepared to move. Badly, as is my custom. It was made much more bearable by folks who came by to help, featuring most prominently one friend we'll call "kay bailey," who put up with a lot from me, considering she was also plotting to prevent me from moving but cheerfully packed box after box anyway. Another friend we'll call "nyczoo" also abandoned her family and helped for a few hours. And eventually, the Thursday night before that Friday morning, I picked up BTG, who also helped into the wee hours. We did not mind the wee hours, see, because we had most of Friday to take naps and clean.
And then, at 8:30ish, I had a call from The Guy. He was in a hotel nearby, and he'd be at my house in about an hour. There was no rush, he explained, since "we" weren't trying to do the 500-mile trip back in one day. I had not known before that that The Guy would be doing my move at all; I assumed he was sending other movers. But if he wanted to be part of my team of movers, right on.
I also, foolishly, assumed that the lack of rush meant he was showing up an hour late. It irritated me a little, but I dismissed that as irrational on my part, since I was only actually mostly ready to go. I could use that extra hour for frenzied packing, and I did.
And about an hour and twenty minutes later, there was The Guy. He was ready to move me. The Guy is. Well. Here is the part where I am totally ageist. The Guy is probably in his mid-sixties.
But whatever. He'd probably mostly be supervising, right? He had disregarded my instructions on where to park, so I came outside to see where the truck was and show him where a better parking spot might be. And, obviously, to check out the crew. Which consisted, it turned out, of the one woman I'd spoken to on the phone, who, as it turned out, was probably in her twenties and who had just moved away from D.C. herself not long before.
And she was. Well. Here is where I am probably sort of sexist, and also where she gets that name I promised you: We'll call her The Guy's Visibly Pregnant Daughter.
BTG is reading over my shoulder, and suggests that "Preggo" would be better. I will acknowledge that it is at least shorter, so we'll go with that.
And that, my friends, was my whole moving crew: The Guy and Preggo.
Stay tuned for Part 3.

A moving story, Part 1

So, I've been hinting about telling you all this story for a long time. The problem with it is that it's a really long story, even by my standards, and so I am simultaneously too lazy to write it and worried if I write something that long, no one will read it. Probably, I need to do this in parts.
So, here goes.
There is a moving and storage company up here that my family has some history with. In general, they have done a great job of both moving and storing our stuff. It was, until recently, owned by a guy we'll call The Guy and a woman we'll call His Business Partner. His Business Partner is, in addition to being a good business person, from a family my family has known for generations, though we don't know her personally all that well. So when I was moving from city to country, I hardly shopped around at all. I called around a little and found that these people we trust were actually at the low end, pricewise, of the normal range.
So, naturally, I hired them to move me.
I dealt entirely with The Guy and a woman who will get a name soon enough, but not His Business Partner. There were some things that I thought of as sort of country quaintness to our business dealings, that in retrospect were giant red flags.

• There was no contract.
• He had to keep calling to ask for my address.
• He asked for a list of my stuff, and then, when I gave it to him, said he wasn't sure the truck he was planning on using would be big enough (So? You're a moving company. Bring a bigger truck.).

But whatever. He was a known quantity and he knew the area I'd be moving to.
We made a plan. The movers would show up at my house between 8 and 8:30 on a Friday. They'd be able to move me out in about an hour and a half (which I thought was optimistic, and so rounded up to three hours) and then hit the road. I would spend the rest of the day cleaning my apartment with a friend (we'll call her Bread Truck Grrl) who'd fly down to help me drive my car up. Then I'd go out to dinner with two of my close friends, BTG and I would crash at their house, and we'd hit the road bright and early Saturday morning. My new job would start on Tuesday, I'd close on my house on Wednesday, my things would be delivered on the following Saturday. Callooh, callay. Perfect.

Watch this space for Part 2.

Privacy and teh internets

So this is not a brilliant story, but I read all of it anyway. It's about some smart Alec who really likes having people pay attention to her, except when they're mean about it, and you know, who can blame her? She also habitually disrespects other people's privacy meanly because she is young and does not get that that will come back to bite her in the butt. She appears to continue doing that throughout this magazine article, in fact.
Read it or don't as you choose, and regardless, wonder why that is a story for the New York Times Magazine.
And then tell me if you have a philosophy on how private to be on the Internet.
Most of you who read my blog know me already, in real life. There are a few lurkers and even fewer commenters who don't, and those people would have a hard time stalking me. Most of my philosophy has been based on that, actually: I don't want anyone stalking me.
But there is also the secret agenda that many bloggers have, I think, which is that we want the whole world to stumble on how totally awesome our blog is. We:

• are smart, or
• are funny, or
• write brilliant reviews, or
• have the best recipes, or
• can enlighten the world about something, or
• make the coolest things, or
• have the very most interesting life story.

For some excellent examples of many of those kinds of blogs, poke around my blogroll. Some of those bloggers are famous, as bloggers go, and some of them are not, but I like them enough to make them a little more famous on my blogroll.
And you will see, there are as many strategies on openness as there are blogs on that list. There are people with their names, or their pictures, or titles of things they're already famous for. There are people with none of that, and all of it. There are also several people who've struggled with how much to share, and with how mean people can be when they think of you as A Writer, rather than as a person who is essentially putting things of interest out there.
I am one of those people who wants to be a famous blogger without having to be a famous person, therefore having my blog standing up to scrutiny on its own poor little legs.

I'll get back to stories about blackberry bushes or squirrels or something soon. In fact, the world's worst moving company is bringing me some stuff tomorrow, so that should be hilarious. But this privacy business was already on mind somewhat because I haven't been posting much, due largely to (positive) stuff going on in my personal life, which I specifically decline to blog about.

But, well. Hm.

Campfire Grrrl

This morning, I did not have time to wash my hair.
And also, I did not have inclination.
Because I spent yesterday evening at a campfire with twenty sixth-graders, a few of their parents and teachers, and a few of my pals.
Some of the highlights:

• The "I've Got Peanut Butter in My Pants" song
• The "Invisible Bench" skit
• The "Doctor's Office" skit
• The commercials: three of the sixth-graders singing the "Free Credit Reports" ads from TV
• Our resultant awareness of how very good it is to get those sixth graders out into the woods for a week
• A poem, consisting of the one line, "I hate podiums!"
• The "Gigolo" song (not to be confused with the classic "Just a Gigolo,") sung by five girls who clearly do not know what that word means
• S'mores
  
• The realization that the two people (one of them me) responsible for putting out the fire had neither a bucket for water nor a flashlight to find their way back into camp

So today, my hair smells like woodsmoke. A lot. And I like it just fine.

Question for you: If you were a woman in her mid-30s, trying to cast someone as your husband for a skit, would you find it less awkward to ask an 11-year-old boy, or the father of one of the 11-year-olds?

Office-meets-nature moment of the day

On her way out of the office, one of my colleagues asked if the bird she could hear singing was sitting on my shoulder. She actually assumed it was on my computer, since it was so loud and clear and my window was closed. I'd only been vaguely aware of it, actually, but I got up to look out the window and scared off a beautiful scarlet tanager.
Here is what we have learned from this:

• I work in a place where birds come and twitter right by my ear.
• I apparently know what a scarlet tanager looks like, even if only spotted for about half a second, as it flies away.

Cool.

For more adventures in office nature, see here and here.

Gambling problem

"See a man about a horse"

or

"see a man about a dog"

?

Both are apparently acceptable, but we think the difference in which you use may be regional. With which expression are you more familiar, and where do you come from?

These, my friends, are the really important questions.

Accentuate the positive

So... New England accents.
There are lots of different ones. For the best examples in films, see The Depahtid and The Russians a-Comin, the Russians a-Comin.
Other New Englanders do not generally think I have too much of a New England accent.
Southerners generally think I talk like a Yankee. I have no problem with that. I did not, in fact, know that "Yankee" was considered a pejorative term in the south until a well-meaning southerner called me one and then apologized.

But here's the thing: Due to years and years of living in New England, I somehow just discovered yestiddy that "pejorative" is not, in fact, "perjorative." God bless spell-check.

I finally get that brother I've been asking my parents for since I was five

So, maybe you heard, we had a Wedding up here.
I know some of you are dying for news of how it went. It was beautiful and fun. The reception was lovely. My sister and her new husband were both calm and cute. Such a delight.
A few key (or just funny) moments:

• The tea ceremony, which went off without a hitch (and I got a dress and a pair of scissors out of it. No, no one knows why scissors).
• The priest plotted with the happy couple about when the H.C. would kiss, against the presumed wishes of the parents of the bride (also priests)
• An aunt of the bride referred to my dad as the "F.O.B.," for father of the bride. That made him wonder aloud what I was to be called. She assured him we'd go with "M.O.H." (maid of honor).
• The heavy summer-camp influence included a brilliant and very successful game of human bingo designed by the maid of honor, and a massive group of camp people singing their camp song.
• I did, indeed, get to drink beer with my cousins and consume it on my new patio furniture.

Some of the things that seemed like crises for a minute, but were easily resolved:

• The misspelling of the groom's name on the cover of the wedding program
• The disappearance of the bride's dog the day before the wedding (turns out, I just accidentally shut her in a closet)
• One sweet and very hungry child who was not brought her food for an insanely long time (the bride fed her some of her own rice)
• Three winners of human bingo, with only one planned prize (the mother of the bride kindly donated some of the centerpieces, which were live plants destined for her own garden, to the cause)

Really, if these are the biggest problems, we're all OK.
Needless to say, I have not yet started on any of the things on my After-The-Wedding to-do list.
Oh! And I almost forgot! The marriage is of course the most joyous news of all, but there is a runner-up piece of joyous news: As my brother-in-law says, "the US Government has officially welcomed [him] to become a permanent resident of the USA," despite his confusing number of names. This is huge. Yea green card!

It's Electric (boogie woogie woogie woogie)

So the word on the street is that PBS is reviving The Electric Company, which was pretty much the greatest television show of all time.
And the new one will be more plot-driven, and it presumably won't have Morgan Freeman or Joan Rivers or Bill Cosby or or Tom Lehrer or Rita Moreno (oh, wait! cameo by Rita Moreno! excellent), and maybe it will suck.
But also, maybe it won't.
And also, I will take any excuse to watch old bits from the old Electric Company and share them with you.
Here:

And here (special for my newly-married sister):

And here:

And one more, with some actual celebrities in it (did you catch Morgan Freeman as the voiceover in "Hot Shot," though?):

Great Interview, Batman

So the premise of The Great Interview Experiment is that bloggers will interview each other, because if we have something interesting enough to say to write a blog, we probably ought to be interviewed about it. Go check it out yourself, and if you're interested, hop on board that train.
I was interviewed by the excellent, if bitterly indifferent, PMJG. He is a very entertaining interviewer, I must say; I hope he enjoyed our experiment as much as I did. I am in the middle of interviewing someone else, too. When that's done, I'll post the finished product here. Meanwhile, I thought you might like to see what it looks like when someone interviews me. Here it is, exactly as it appears on his blog.

What's your story?
I lived in D.C. for a year after college, moved to New Hampshire (which is where I sometimes grew up) for several years, and left in my late twenties because I was bored. I moved back to D.C. because I think it's a fantastic city and because I still have friends there, but after eight years, I was looking for a job and found myself increasingly drawn back north. I don't mind "bored" as much as I mind "shoved," and maybe that is the difference between my twenties and my thirties.

How did you find the Great Interview Experiment?
Through She Just Walks Around With It. She apparently did this experiment a long time ago, but just got around to posting the results.

How did you choose your screen name? How does it fit in with the theme of your blog? Are you using that spelling of "girl" ironically?
Not ironically, but maybe nostalgically. That screenname dates way, way back, to maybe 1997, when I was director of a day camp called Hornets' Nest, which allowed me to simultaneously be a camp director (which I loved) and feel like a badass (which I craved). That wasn't so long after I'd been sort of tangentially into the whole riotgrrl thing in college. I just sort of kept using it. So, you know, hornets, feminism, summer camp, badassery. All of that probably fits in with the theme of the blog, but only because it fits in with the theme of my life.

Why did you decide to start a blog?
The idea for the blog came up when I moved. My D.C. friends got very wide-eyed, asking me about all the things I'd surely miss and how cold it would surely be. I found myself e-mailing mobs of people about what it was actually like once I got here, and a blog seemed easier.

What would you say is the single greatest challenge about moving to the country?
Not knowing anything. It makes for funny stories, which is good for the blog, but the sheer amount of stuff I don't know is overwhelming. I need a roof rake? Really?
Oh, and also the move itself was a tremendous challenge. Because I hired the worst moving company ever, and the owner, who is oldish, and his daughter, who is pregnant, showed up to move me. I am not sure I am ready to blog about that experience, even yet.

How did you get such a hefty blogroll in just six months of posting?
The big honkin' blogroll is largely blogs I was reading before I was blogging (bloggin'?). And now, of course, Google tells me what to read.

How do you feel about Google, and their sinister Google Everything(tm) project?
Now you're gonna get us both killed.
I am, unfortunately, exactly the kind of person Google dreams of (That is not anthropomorphism. I actually believe that Google has a brain, and it frightens me.). I dislike everything this giantness stands for, and yet, it's so eeeeeeeeeeeasy. And yeah, parts of it suck, but, well, I'd rather do something else than think too hard. Do you hear me, overlords? I WELCOME YOUR TELLING ME WHAT TO THINK. Plus, the maps are excellent, I find.

Do you hate technorati nearly as much as I hate technorati?
I do.
As do all right-thinking folk.

Between your posts and your links to sites like the "blog" of "unnecessary" quotation marks, you appear to be a fan of punctuation and correctly written words. Do you have a literary background?
"Literary" may be pushing it. I am a writer and editor, and I'm a former copy editor. I like my language and communication fairly precise.

Are emoticons in fact ruining America?
I think it is both lazy and useful to have something to indicate, in writing, that you're kidding. I have little use for emoticons with devil horns and sunglasses, but I use smileys probably too much. Actually, now that I think about it, it strikes me that smileys are OK, but probably winks are ridiculously lazy. How little game do you have if you need a symbol to say "I'm flirting with you"?

What do you miss most about moving to the city (besides the May Day dancing)?
Specific people. I was there eight years, I made friends, and I miss them, often. But really, that's about it. Also, this is where I totally reveal my blog for the sham that it is, but country folks know that there are lots and lots of degrees of country-ness, and I am in one of the easier types to move to: the college town. So there are still lectures and sports and arts, just in a town of many fewer people (about 23,000). So that eases the transition some.

Would you describe your neighbors as hicks, hillbillies, hayseeds, or bumpkins?
Mostly, I would describe them as "professors." I might also describe them as "uninterested in meeting me."

Did it turn out that those were mice making noise in your house, or were the Agatha Christie books actually preparing you to deal with a real, honest-to-god serial killer who happened to be lurking around your house?
Oh, the mice are real, which does not mean the serial killer isn't. The problem with Agatha Christie is that all she really prepares you for is solving the murder after it happens. If you're a victim, you're doomed, and nothing can prevent that. All I can hope for is that the serial killer waits until after The Wedding.

[As bzzzzgrrrl is still alive, and The Wedding concluded successfully, we can assume that the killer is either nonexistent, or very considerate.]

Pimp your blog in 25 words or less.
Mostly, I tell stories at my own expense. Also, I'm hilarious. And in general, things are spelled right.

No, I mean really pimp your blog. Pretend you have a gold tooth, and a diamond-headed cane, if it helps. Right now that description could apply just as easily to She Just Walks Around With It as it could to yours. Make me want to pay money to sleep with your blog.
OK, first of all, I would pay money to sleep with Kristy's blog, if it wouldn't create complications with my existing relationships, so if I've given the impression that my little fish-in-different-water story is anything like that, I'm good with it.

But I'll try again, anyway:
• Hot lettuce
• David Gregory
• Cheap drinks
• Pregnant movers
• Hippie Birkenstock Silver Jewelry Guy
• Squirrel-wrangling
• Candidate spouses
• Contra dancing
• Explosive dust evaluation
• and very many bulleted lists.
Better?

Yes.

Updates: Wedding edition

So, when I wrote about The Wedding, I had the beginnings of a list of things to do. The Wedding is now just a few days away, and here is where we stand:

• get a haircut: Done! OK, and there might have been some dyeing along with the cutting.
  
• hang pictures: Done! I am not certain all the pictures are hung where I want them, but at least some of them are on the walls.
  
• get dryer: Done! The delivery guys who said they'd be here between 8 a.m. and noon showed up at 7:30 a.m. I have already dried one load of clothes.
  
• get dishwasher: Done! It arrived with the dryer, and is already storing dirty dishes.
  
• go to Nashua: Done! Who doesn't love a trip to Nashua?
  
• move furniture: Done! Boy howdy, has there been a lot of furniture moved around here.
  
• figure out placecard thing: Done! By someone else, granted, but done nonetheless.
  
• finish viewbook at work: Stop pressuring me. I still have tomorrow.
  

Old home day

So, it's one of those times of reconnecting with the long-lost. Some of that is to be expected, just by virtue of my having moved back here.
And coincidentally, at around the same time, I started reading the blog of an old college friend, who also reads mine, and who has sent pictures to a few of my other college friends, so there's been that reconnection.
And coincidentally, there's a new social networking site for alumni of the camp I used to work for, which has reconnected me to still more people.
And coincidentally, my sister is getting married this week (maybe you've heard about The Wedding?), which is naturally bringing together people I haven't seen or talked to in years.
And less coincidentally, I have reinvolved myself with a local nonprofit, which has put me back in touch with even more people I used to know.
So that's me. It's amazing to connect so quickly with people you used to have ties to, and it's weird to have to tell them what you've been doing for the last ten years. Blah, blah, blah.
You know this.
Because it's happening to you, too. Virtually everyone I talk to these days has a story like this, people who are suddenly drifting back into their lives. If you think I mean you, I do. But not just you.
Tell us about it in the comments.

City things I miss that seem like they should be country things

This is likely not to be a recurring feature. If I can only think of one thing for this category in six months, it's probably not so much a "category," as it is a "thing."

• The opportunity to go out at dawn on May Day and see folk dancers.

I am sorry, friends in D.C., that I only thought of this later this morning. If I'd thought of it yesterday, I'd have told you where to go see it. Here's what it might have looked like:

Google Reader

I am trying to decide if I love Google Reader or hate it. There is a lot to hate, and yet, I don't, quite.
But here is the thing about Google everything that amuses me most, and also often insults me: Recommendations and targeted ads.
Yeah, like you know me so well, just because you know what I read and also what I blog about and search for also what every e-mail is about. But you don't. Like that one time with the cougar stuff? Way out of left field.
Here are some of the feeds Google Reader thinks I would like:

• Boston Globe -- Front Page
• It's like I'm... mmmagic!
• BroadwayWorld.com Featured Content
• UnionLeader.com - RSS Feeds
• Apostrophism
• washingtonpost.com - Miss Manners
• TheaterMania.com
• Apostrophe Abuse
• Blue Hampshire
• RED PEN, INC.
• Polymer Clay Daily
• Charming, but single
• Dorothy Surrenders

Shut up, Google. I would never read two apostrophe blogs.

An open letter to Kevin B. at Wal-Mart

First, thank you so much for your help with my patio furniture last night. I am sorry that you had to leave your post in sporting goods to help me, but, as you said, it's as if they gave everyone in lawn and garden the same night off. I hope you did not lose too many ammunition sales. I was very grateful.

Second, I lied, and I was wrong. When you asked me, at 9 p.m., "You gonna put this together tomorrow?" and I said, "Yep," what I was thinking was, "Hell, no. I'm going to put this eight-piece set together tonight. I've been waiting weeks to get some patio furniture, and I'm not going to wait any longer. But I'm not going to tell you that, just because you sound so reasonable." Also, you kind of remind me of my friend Addicus, which may not have helped in this case. Addicus's plan would never have been the most reasonable.

Needless to say, you were so, so right. The only reasonable thing to consider doing was to wait until daylight, especially since my screwgun wasn't really charged, but I now have a sunroom full of plastic bags, styrofoam, and partially-put-together patio furniture. Your way would have been better. I'll finish up after work tonight.

Binge reading

Those of you who pay attention to the side rail of this blog will notice that I've been reading a lot lately. This, too, is related to The Wedding (when my sister moved to her fiance's house, she got rid of books, and I took everything by Agatha Christie, which means I must read it all immediately), but that's beside the point.
The point is this:
When you live alone in a house that creaks some and has mice a little, and you already have an overactive imagination, it does not matter how brilliant a storyteller Ms. Christie is. You must put down And Then There Were None well before bedtime.

The Wedding

Sorry to have been so sporadic with the posting lately.
The Wedding is coming up.
My sister is getting married May 10 (coincidentally, the same day Jenna Bush is).
My sister and her fiance are both very low-key, down-to-earth people. This wedding is being held in a church 40 minutes away from my house, with a reception in the parish hall across the street. I am doing practically nothing for this wedding, though my mother is doing an incredible amount of work and my sister, obviously, is, too. I am the maid of honor, but have been relieved of some of the traditional obligations (my sister wants neither shower nor bachelorette party, for example).
I cannot quite figure out how it has managed to consume nearly every waking moment for me, but it has. I am, it should be said, very, very excited. But still.
I now think in terms of things that must happen Before The Wedding and things that will have to wait until After The Wedding. Most of these things are entirely unrelated to The Wedding, except to me.
Some examples:

Before The Wedding

• get a haircut
• hang pictures
• get dryer
• get dishwasher
• go to Nashua
• move furniture
• figure out placecard thing
• finish viewbook at work
  

After The Wedding

• tame blackberry bushes in backyard
• examine the feng shui of my house
• make skirts
• register for summer classes

Yeah, I don't know.

Anyone know...

...why I would have "Livin' on a Prayer" stuck in my head?

I dislike it.

I am inclined to blame nyczoo; she's often responsible for this kind of thing. But I don't think it's her fault this time.

You know what is her fault? That I know about, and therefore must share with everyone, this:



People who have ever been to summer camp may find this familiar. Then again, if they went to that one place I love, they may not, as that may be the only camp I've been to that doesn't do that song.

Thank you for your support

I went to college in the late 1980s, into the early 1990s, which was, I believe, the heyday of the wine cooler.
And most of my women friends didn't drink a whole lot in college, and neither did I. But we had a wine cooler or two, here and there.
Today, I was looking at the blog of one of those women friends, now a woman in her 30s, a wife, mother, artist, business owner, and I noticed this on her Twitter feed:

Completely caught-up business-wise, I'm kicking back tonight with a copy of Artful Blogging. Love this mag. Think I need a wine cooler.

It made me almost alarmingly happy. She claims to me now, in IM, that she only has about one every three months, but still, it pleases me to know that she still drinks them. It feels like there is some continuity in the universe.
It also brought up, and not for the first time this month, the time she was dared to bring a wine cooler to her logic class (at, I want to say, 9 a.m.) and drink it. Dare accepted, her parents (and children) would be proud to know.

When the spit hits the fan

I know, it must seem like I romanticize my new Northern life sometimes. And probably, I do. But it's not all cheap drink prices and fried clams and houses a person can afford to buy up here.
#1 on the list of things that I am more likely to see up here than in the big city, and that I could totally do without:

• Boys who dip.

Warm and clammy

One of the random things I missed about New England while I was gone was fried seafood, which I hardly ever eat. I don't like it all that much, actually, and it's bad for me. But now and then, specifically in the summer, I crave it in some deep part of my soul.
Up here (and in parts of New Jersey, and probably in lots of other places), they have these divey seafood restaurants and stands where you can get a paper box of fried something or steamed something else, or maybe you will put your fried something in a hot dog bun and call it a "roll." You probably eat it with french fries. I have inherited at least some of my taste and language around these delicacies from my great grandmother, who had strong opinions, and who was born in the 1870s, so this has been a thing for some time. In my family, we use terms like "neck" and "sweater" to talk about clams, and I am pretty sure clams actually have neither necks nor sweaters. The fried clams that you get many places are inadequate. They are actually fried clam strips. Lots of neck, no belly. What you want is whole-belly fried clams, or what's the point?
This is all a long way to say that this week, they are serving whole-belly fried clam rolls at the dining commons on campus, and I know, once again, that I am home.

Crazy hungry

Actual conversation with a coworker, moments ago:

Me: What are you doing for lunch?
She: I feel like I ought to start the week eating healthy. I kind of want to walk to Panera. Call me crazy, but ...
Me: OK, Crazybutt.

To be fair, that is my sister's joke, from when she was 12. But I still love it.

Long-overdue updates

• On this: Sorry I didn't get around to posting this update later that night. Somehow, there was another luau Friday, too. Seriously.
• On this: Mike C. just showed up, about two days after I gave him the URL to this blog, with my blue marker (which he deposited in my office) and a theory (which I had to chase him down to get). Mind you, this marker was not spotted in his office, he just swiped it back for me. So far, I think there has been no backlash. Mike's theory: Some folks were "whiteboarding," (Oh, Mike. Whiteboard as a verb? Really?) and needed a marker, and borrowed mine, and never brought it back. They last whiteboarded a month and a half ago, and therefore probably do not really need to own my blue marker. Also, I now have roughly a thousand beautiful colors of dry-erase markers procured for me by one of my big-city friends. They do not have erasers in the cap, but they are nonetheless awesome, and I predict when things slow down around here, they will be involved in a dry-erase mural of some kind.
• On weather: The weather here has been gorgeous and sunny, in the 60s and 70s. It still gets cold overnight, and when I drove by Dublin Lake at 7:40 a.m. on Saturday and 1 p.m. on Sunday, it was still at least somewhat frozen, but I am not swimming in it.
• On this: I have plugged in a mouse repellent that works by vibrating the wiring in my house. So far, it seems to be working. No evidence of death, and no evidence of mice.
• On this: Yesterday, I went to Wal-Mart, Target, Building #19, Sears, and Ocean State Job Lots, plus the web sites of several other businesses, looking for a grill, a set of patio furniture, and a hammock. I found a grill at Ocean State Job Lots that would have been perfect, but that I did not buy because I thought I could do better. Wrong. I found two adequate grills and a perfect set of patio furniture at Wal-Mart, and bought none of them because they were out of stock. I found an adequate hammock at Target and did not buy it because it cost $100, and I am not paying $100 for adequate.
• On this: Hippie Birkenstock Silver Jewelry Guy has been supplanted, or perhaps supplemented, by Hippie Birkenstock Tapestry and Flowy Skirt Gal.
  

Black and blue

I'm sorry I didn't post yesterday. There was a luau — I don't know, it's complicated. I'll try to post more tonight.
But I wanted to show you the dry-erase board from my office:


for two reasons.

1. In my awesome color-coded organizational system, this week's to-dos are in black. There is a lot of black on that board. Busy week.
2. Though there is less of it, you will observe some blue, which is next week's color. That's right, blue. More on this later.

Tales from the bar

I realize that CMC is in danger of becoming a blog about weather and drink prices, and that would be too bad.
But if you'll indulge me for a moment.
There is a bar up here that I have avoided since I moved back, for several reasons:

• It's where my favorite wings joint used to be, and I am still bitter
• It specializes in foofy drinks with silly names and things they call "martinis" because they are in martini glasses
• It has a reputation for being the "expensive" bar in town

Whatever.
Tonight, I could avoid it no longer. I did not order a mojito even though I sort of wanted one. That expensive mojito? $5.50. That's not a special; that is what a full price mojito costs.
These people just don't know what they've got. In the big city, I would have paid easily $9 for that drink, $13 if I'd been in an "expensive" bar. Of course, I did not have one, and had a $4 Magic Hat #9 instead, because I love #9 and there's a summer full of mojitos ahead.

Also, as I was leaving, I saw a round piece of plastic on the floor and put it on the table. A friend I was out with asked if that was a Round Tuit, and I fake-laughed for a long time. Normally, that would not be something I'd mention in this space, but this time, this friend said he expected to read about it on City Mouse Country, and the vaudeville performers who raised me always said, "you've gotta give the people what they want."
Come to think, so did the French whore who I used to bum cigarettes from, but she said it with an accent.

My mother's daughter

How many shelves full of curtains do you have in your linen closet? Is it less than three? Does three shelves full of curtains you're not currently using in your house seem like a lot?
Yeah, I was afraid of that.

Naming rights

So, some of my D.C. friends who are native New Englanders and I used to joke about the people we knew in common (who we didn't, actually, know in common) because of their New Englandy names. By New Englandy, of course, I mean French Canadian (Thibodeau), Irish (Sully and Doyle) and Italian (Girardi, pronounced Jirahdee).

Here is a phenomenon I don't totally understand: I don't think I knew anyone named "Andy" in D.C. I know, or know of, several up here. What do you think that's about? If you're reading this and named Andy, comment, please, and tell us where you're from.

Those of you who spend a lot of time in the comments might have discerned that I have a lot of people named "Mike" prominently in my life. It's true, and not all of them comment here, either. There are also several Bills. Both Mikes and Bills exist in both places, though.

I only know one boy named Sue, for the record, but she is neither a boy nor named Sue.

Happiness is...

Sometime in the first season of Friends, Phoebe dates this therapist, Roger, who everyone else hates because he's so that guy, and at one point, when he has made Monica feel all sad and inadequate, she has a cookie, and he says on his way out the door, "Mon? Remember, they're just cookies. They're not love."

In completely unrelated news, today at the Student Center, there are free Choco Tacos, and I cannot remember when a bad mood has lifted more quickly.
Mmmm, Choco Taco.

Look who's in the big town

So I was back in D.C. for an incredible whirlwind tour of about 40 hours (gasp), and, gotta say, it was fascinating to do it with a group of people, most of whom have not been to D.C. or who have been only on their eighth-grade class trip.
Some of the things that blow me away about D.C. that also impress or surprise people who've hardly been there:

• The Holocaust museum
• The Chinatown arch
• How walkable a city it is
• The cherry blossoms
• All the blossoms, actually
  

Some of the things that at some point stopped blowing me away (in some cases, when I was 7) that impress or surprise some of the people who've hardly been there:

• How expensive drinks are
• That the Capitol and the White House are not the same thing
• That the Capitol and the White House are kind of far apart
• T-shirt vendors
• The Cherry Blossom Festival
• Starbucks

Definitely good to be back in town for a little bit. After a more-eventful-than-I-had-hoped trip home, I am glad to be able to report that the last of the snow melted off my deck Thursday before I left, and it has not been replaced with more snow. Today, we expect highs in the 40s.

Country Mouse

Yes, I get the irony.

So, I have mice.
For a while, we have been semi-peacefully cohabitating, because I could not bring myself to snap the necks of creatures that are not doing me any real harm, and I could not bring myself to buy Havahart traps intending to release these creatures to their deaths of hypothermia, but now, it's springish, and they are on my last nerve, and I am ready to get rid of them.
Not quite neck-snapping ready or poison ready, but ready nonetheless.
Any thoughts? Havahart? Sonic mouse repellent? Any particular brands you recommend?

Oh, and there will be no cats involved in this process. I am allergic, but that's not why. I would just rather deal with live mice than tortured uneaten dead ones that someone presents as a gift. Shudder.

Oh, and cousins who are coming to stay with me next month? Don't worry; I'm sure they'll all be gone by then. No, really.

An open letter to my sister's future mother-in-law

I do not know how you knew that what I wanted more than anything was a tiger/leopard/snakeskin-patterned sarong, as I did not at all know it myself.
But thank you for bringing it to me from Indonesia, because I love it very, very much.
And wear it, a lot, even if just over my jeans and around my house for right now. It's beautiful.

Oops

If you see this headline:

Lucas sues Brit over 'Star Wars' outfits

don't worry. It's about some guy from the UK, not Britney Spears, even though that would be more interesting. It's probably the use of the word "outfits" that threw you. They actually mean "Stormtrooper uniforms."

Boosting

If you are looking for:

• A residential summer camp for your kids
• A one-week "starter" residential camp, with counselors who are mostly parents themselves, for a 7-10-year old
• A day camp in southwestern New Hampshire
• Adventure programs for older kids (to places like Hawaii and Colorado, for Pete's sake)
• Summer jobs for people of good character who are out of high school (especially guys)
• A family camp where folks of all ages can sleep in cabins and do summer-campy stuff, without anyone having to worry about cooking or dishes

...let me know. I know a place. I may have just come from a program committee meeting, in fact.

If, on the other hand, you're just looking to support all that wonderfulness and you're in or near southwestern NH, try the Mountainfilm Festival this Friday night. It looks like it might be outstanding, and proceeds will benefit that place I know.

The power of cynical thinking

I have given up on thinking I can make spring happen by dressing for warmer weather.
I've moved on to thinking I can make spring happen by buying a grill and a hammock, maybe some patio furniture.
The fact that my first attempt at this required me to drive through snow and sleet to Ocean State Job Lots, where I did not, in fact, find a grill or hammock or patio furniture that I liked might not bode well.

'Za

Pizza up here is different.
It's greasy, and yummy, and mostly made by Greeks (My favorite place as a kid was Danos; in my current town, the place to go is Athens. Amici's is good, too, but it's not Greek and much New Yorkier).
You can always get a good Greek salad with good Greek dressing to go with it.
You can always get anchovies if you want them.
For a while, people up here called it "'za," although I haven't heard that lately.
There's a different flavor to it, too, and I learned what the secret is from my friend Billy just before I moved away to Washington: cheddar cheese mixed in with the mozzarella. That accounts both for the greasiness and for the yumminess.

Also, I am eating it for breakfast this morning.

CK obsession

Most of my readers are non-local to where I live, and that's fine. Desireable, even. But this post is largely for my Monadnock-region-based friends (and stalkers).
A friend of mine has started a social network site called Citizen Keene, to keep people up on what's going on in the region, including but not limited to live music, local politics, the number of crashes in the roundabouts, etc. It's worth checking out, and it's worth joining if you live in these parts or have a vested interest in what's going on in these parts, even from far away. I've put a badge on the right side of this page, for ease of navigation.
You know me, I'm always looking for community. How thoughtful of Mike to just build me one.
If you need or want to do the same for some community you're a part of, Mike used ning, and I think he's happy with it.

I'll be back to the funny soon, really. In weather news, I watched maybe a dozen robins hop around this morning in the fresh snowfall from last night. Think that about sums it up.

Sole arbiter=taste

Got this e-mail yesterday:

I was just thinking of you because I'm planning to go to a "read your favorite poem" event tonight. ... I'm not reading because I don't really know what my favorite poem is. Now, I realize that no one else would know or care if I just read one of the poems of which I'm particularly fond, but by the time this idea had occurred to me the deadline for declaring oneself as a reader had passed. I'm taking along "Dreamwood" by Adrienne Rich just in case they happen to have on-the-spot reading opportunities. So I was wondering — have you ever been to such an event and, if so, what did you read?

I haven't, actually, been to such an event but I love the idea very, very much. I was equally baffled by the idea of a "favorite," but I think my friend makes a good point about how no one can (or will) judge that. It's OK to pick something you like as much as you like other poems, or even just one you like today. It's not a commitment for life.
And still, it took me a minute. I discarded a bunch of stuff by John Donne and Christina Rossetti and Alix Olson. I tried unsuccessfully to find something by Luis Alberto Urrea to love as much as his prose. I remembered, eventually, that Langston Hughes's "Theme for English B" used to be very important to me, and remembered even after that that some of my own friends, including the author of the e-mail, are poets who used to write things that I loved, but haven't read in years and years.
I pick "Howl" by Allen Ginsberg. I love me some Beat poets.
So if you were going to something like this, tonight, what would you bring?

Sweating the almost unbelievably small stuff

So when I got to this new job, I inherited a smallish, dirtyish white board from someone else. That's fine with me.
Here's how I immediately planned to use it:
I would get a bunch of different-colored dry-erase markers, and then color-code my to-do list. Each week would be a different color, and the colors would rotate, and I would always know what I had to do when. There have since been asterisk-based additions to the system, as well as a code of crossing out and erasing.
So.
I asked for a bunch of dry-erase markers.
The woman who is supposed to obtain them assured me she would, soon. After a while, she brought me one brown dry-erase marker as a stopgap, and asked what else I needed. I needed four or five markers, in assorted colors.
After a while longer, she came through big-time, and presented me with a four-pack of the best dry-erase markers I've ever seen, in red, blue, green and black. They write well, and they have erasers right in the caps, and they look like microphones, although I am obviously not singing into my dry-erase markers at work, really, I'm not. So at this point I have five colors, although if I can avoid using the brown one, which is both ugly and just not as good a marker, I will do that.
And then, almost immediately, my blue marker disappeared. I looked everywhere for it. It was just gone. One of my coworkers said, "I blame [other coworker]. Of course, I blame [other coworker] for everything." This is chuckle-worthy because [other coworker] is just a basically good guy, who I don't interact with too much, but who clearly is not breaking into my office to steal my markers.
About a month and a half has gone by since the mysterious disappearance of the blue marker, and I have gotten used to not having it. It means my color-coded system is red, green, black and brown, which sometimes looks like Christmas but often just looks yucky. But that's OK. It's functional. The color-coding works. It doesn't fill my soul with joy at its pure aesthetics, but it is keeping me organized, which is a minor miracle.
And then.
And then I was in [other coworker]'s office last week, and there, plain as day, was my one blue marker.
And now I am obsessed. Not so much with how it got there, although that is a puzzle (Did [other coworker] actually break into my office to take it? Did [other coworker] assert to the person responsible for procuring markers that he needed one, and she decided since I had four others that I wouldn't miss the blue one?). No, I am obsessed because I want it back now, a lot, and cannot for the life of me figure out how to make that happen. I can't ask for it, because that seems is petty and weird. I obviously cannot steal it back. I truly do not believe that there was or would have been any malice involved. But — but I want it.
So, my friends, I think I am going to have to go out myself and buy another blue marker if I can find it, another four-pack if necessary. Because this is just completely out of hand.

4/10 update for my friends who are not [other coworker]: Tonight I was out at the local watering hole with some friends including but not limited to [other coworker], and the fact that I have a blog sort of came up, which it mostly hasn't at my current place of employment. Immediately, I worried about this post and one other that maybe no one will see or, if they do, be bothered by. It feels somehow unethical to take this post down, though. I mean, it's the Internet. I knew it was possible that anyone could see anything I wrote, including my irrational pen ravings, right? Plus, maybe if I make this post really, really long, no one will want to read it anymore and I won't be all embarrassed by it.

4/10 update for my friend who is [other coworker]: If you've read this far, you know that I am absolutely crazy and not to be trusted with any more markers than I already have. Who knows what I'm doing with them? But I think my friends are all a little curious. So, I'll make you a deal: You keep the marker, but please post a comment here to let me know how you came by it and if it is, in fact, the missing marker from my set or if she just bought us the same markers.

Just foolin'

Me, I love an un-mean prank.
Love, love, love.
Not as much as my sister, for whom today is a little bit of a religious holiday*, but still, a lot.
So here's what I've seen and loved so far today:

• Announcing Google Weblogs (beta)
• Gmail custom time

What have you got? What wackiness is your college newspaper up to today? Who wrapped someone's office in bubble wrap? Tell me in the comments.
Alternately, recount your favorite old prank stories. Obviously, extra points if I am in those stories.

*Said sister, in fact, has a sort of sacred shoebox in her closet, filled with wondrous things, including but not limited to squirt office supplies (stapler, calculator, etc.) and plastic ants. This is not the only day on which these artifacts are used ritually, but it is certainly a big one for her.

God's little joke (or maybe Yahoo! Weather's)

Clearly, this is someone's idea of April Fool's hilarity. Check out this weather forecast (and these temperatures):


Oh, yeah! April's here! Sixty degrees! SUCKER.

Oh, and for those of you wondering what "Wintry mix" means, right this second it means big white snowflakes, and lots of 'em.

These will be someone's good old days

So, I like country music. I like it more than those of you who have not ridden in a car with me would expect.
That said, I am not immune to the fact that there are basically about 8 motifs in contemporary country music lyrics. Hell, I could write a dissertation on it. We're not getting into that here. One main subset of the genre is "stuff used to be much better when life was simpler, which is whenever I was a kid." In general, I find those particular songs either amusing or annoying, depending on my mood. Hey, by the way, note to Bucky Covington, you are one country singer, in particular, who should not be singing proudly about how your momma smoked and drank while she was pregnant and you ate lead paint chips, because, um, we all know, and we just didn't want to say anything.
But wait.
That's not the point.
The point is that I was driving up Main Street in my small town, which was essentially deserted because it's after 7 on a Sunday night, and the live version of Mayberry, which is a prime example of that scoffable music, came on, and there was a really beautiful light and kids were playing outside in their almost snow-free yards, and I totally, totally got it, for just a second.
And then I drove to the sandwich shop, where my friend and I would sit across the table from each other, not talking, while I write my blog and she reads my blog on our separate laptops, and I get ready to comment to the small-town online social networking site about how what this town needs, really, is a laundromat with wi-fi.

Safety belt

So, last night, my friend and I went looking for a belt for her; her pants were driving her crazy, and we weren't going to be able to do anything else without a belt.
And we found a belt.
A totally fantastic belt, that can be worn two ways, and one way, looks tough and foxy and perfect. Worn the other way, it looks very regular and work-appropriate.
Excellent.
This belt was so awesome that it necessitated several kinds of adventure, which we pursued unsuccessfully like the most boring ever version of After Hours or maybe Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle (without weed; perhaps that's obvious).
Some belt, right?
But about that belt.
Does a tough cool-kid belt like that lose some of its street cred if you buy it at JC Penney?
Does it lose any more if you use your mom's discount card to buy it?

And many happy returns

I realize that this must already seem like a weird fascination with a certain someone's age, but today is Vince Vaughn's 38th birthday.
Which means Vince Vaughn is older than David Gregory.
How is that even possible?
Of course, Anderson Cooper is 40.

Snowed again

An inch or two on the ground, about 5" expected.
Anytime March wants to start going out like a lamb, I am ready for it.

Plug

If you have the opportunity to meet Luis Alberto Urrea, or to hear him speak, you should do that.
That is a man with some good stories to tell, and not just the ones that are published.
I have only read one book of his, so far, and it is beautiful, but a total downer.
In person, he is hilarious and not at all a downer.

Also: I feel like I have mentioned this before, but a quick Google search says I haven't, so I'll say it now. When I was first contemplating applying for, interviewing for, taking this job I have, my friend and reference (frequent commenter bzh), got very excited about it. She thought I was made to work in a college. She thought it would be the perfect environment for me. I agreed aloud, but did not get it in my soul. I have had several occasions to remember that she said that, and, totally right. Thanks, bzh.

It's a small town after all

So I have about three friends in this area, though I'm working on it. And one of them had a birthday today. I agreed to join her for a math movie*, followed by dinner, followed by cheap beer.
We knew she'd know some of the people at the movie, but anticipated an evening devoid of people we knew from there, unless some of the people we actively invited to the bar met us there.
None did, but we ran into a total of five people she knew between the restaurant and the bar (including two people I knew, including one guy who for some reason seems to inspire people to show him their chest hair in public, at least every time I am around).
And that, my friends, is what it's like to be in a small town.
Bear this in mind, too: This is actually the "big" town (pop. 23,000) in our area. The really small towns are all the ones around it.


*Your random factoid of the day: Last year, there were two different animated movies made based on Edwin Abbott's 1885 book, Flatland. One is short and filled with famous people's voices. The other is long and filled with the voices of people I have never heard of. Tonight, we saw the short one.

Bellwether

So there are, so far, no crocuses, no daffodils, no chirpy birds or buds on the trees.
And it is 39 degrees out (so the snow is melting, but slowly). More snow is, in fact, expected Friday and Saturday.
But.
But the guy who sells silver jewelry to the college kids outside is back today. So clearly, it's spring.

In the words of my friend and former coworker, "Ah, the harbingers of spring: Hippie Birkenstock Silver Jewelry Guy."

Indeed.

All class, all the time

One of the great benefits to my job is free college classes. Eventually, I may decide to pursue a master's degree, but for right now, I am taking classes just for fun. I start being able to use this benefit just in time for the first summer session.
So, what should I take?
What would you take, if you could, for free, with no grade-type pressure?
What do you wish you'd taken in college, just for kicks?
Some of the current contenders:

• Seminar: James Joyce's Ulysses.
• Piano Class I
• Writing Poetry
• Ethics
• Residential Landscape Design
• Whole Grain Cooking

Some of the options I'm not considering now (in some cases, purely for scheduling reasons):

• Human Skeletal Remains
• Mythology, Genre, and the American Dream: The Baseball Film
• Explosive Dust Evaluation
• Currency Crises and Global Poverty
• Introduction to Geography

Fun with headlines

The local paper's front-page, above the fold story yesterday bore this headline:
Roundabout crashes down

So, when you read that, what was your first assumption about this story?
a) There is a roundabout locally that has somehow collapsed.
b) The number of crashes in a local roundabout (or, perhaps, in all roundabouts) has decreased.
c) Roundabout? What the hell is a roundabout?

I'll add the correct answer, with my own commentary, after you all have had a chance to have at it.

Things that probably happen all the time in Washington (but not to me)

So tonight, for work, I'm ghost-hunting with the good folks from the local branch of The Atlantic Paranormal Society.
What did I possibly do to deserve a job as awesome as this?

Hair

If you saw me, and my hair was in what can only be described as a "Marlo-Thomas-as-That-Girl flip, but frizzier," you would not judge me too harshly, would you? Would you assume that's how my hair always looks? Because seriously, it's just one bad day.

You OK?

I can't help but notice that this week, when it's so quiet on campus and in the local taverns (Spring Break), it's also very quiet on IM and on my favorite blogs.
So I just wanted to check in and be sure you're all OK. I mean, if you're not blogging or chatting because you're also on Spring Break, then party on, dudes.
But I'm beginning to get worried about you.
Exempt: Mike, who has been commenting up a storm over here, and polkadotcreations, who commented a few times here and entertained me with a minute-mystery on her own blog just last night.

Weather (indoors edition)

Sometimes, you might have a late-afternoon meeting that would require you leave your office in a big hurry at around 4:20.
And sometimes, the next morning, you might decide to work from home to finish up a very important project, which would mean you'd get in around 11, when the project was done.
Sometimes, it might happen coincidentally that in your haste to get to the meeting, you might neglect to turn off the humidifier that is necessitated by the fact that your office is very hot and dry.
And so sometimes, by the time you opened the door to your office, there might be condensation dripping off the window, and your office might resemble a tropical rainforest.

Weather

Snowed again.
More snow coming tomorrow, too. But for now, it's just freezing raining.
Looks like spring really is coming.

Reasons it is probably just as well that I am not someone's mom

To me, peanut butter cookies are a reasonable appetizer before dinner.
Two nights in a row.

Lost phone

For all of those of you who've had fun making fun of my phone and how old-school it appears to be, with its antenna and being the size of my head and all, I'd just like to point out that what appears to be my very phone was in last week's episode of Lost as Jin's phone that gets run over in Korea.
Yup, on TV. Which, I believe, makes it hip and up-to-the-minute.
Oh, I guess except for the fact that Lost takes place in 2004. Hm.

Sick

Today, I am sick, which means I am:
a) whiny, and
b) not going cross-country skiing with my old friend and his wife and their child, who I have never met. Even though they are getting several inches more pretty fresh snow even as we speak.
You should feel sad for me and take this opportunity to be very entertaining. If you don't have anything entertaining to say yourself, give me an entertaining link to play on.

Things that would not happen in Washington (but would happen in a movie)

Today, I was waiting with three other people for a business meeting.
Two of the people, who had not met each other before, who are in different not-farming lines of work, got into a discussion of their sheep (which both own, as pets) and chickens (which both own). And how old the respective animals were, and what sexes and kinds they were, and whether the male was a wether or ram. Some of these sheep and chickens are very old, so you know.
Also discussed: The one rooster that the one guy has. "We don't know anything about him, his lineage or anything. We found him. He wandered out of the town forest."
So, yeah.
I did not ever have this conversation before a business meeting in Washington.

What readers want to know

By far the most frequent in-person question I get from regular readers of my blog is, "Did you get your garage doors fixed?"
"Fixed" is a funny word.
But to update: I actually sort of got them deliberately broken. They both go up and down now, but I have to do it manually, and the garage door openers are disengaged so they can't do any more harm. Someday, I will have so much money that I will already have a dryer and a disposal and a dishwasher and a new furnace, and a pile of money left over, and then, I might replace the garage door openers with ones that are younger than David Gregory.

David Gregory

Fresh on the heels of a conversation with two women friends last night on whether or not we do or should dye our hair, and whether it's for reasons of grayness or blondness, another friend reminded me of one of my favorite factlets: David Gregory is less than a year older than I am.
If you don't know David Gregory, he is a TV journalist who seems like a real grownup, who does especially well grilling the president of the United States and also dancing goofily on the Today show.
The David Gregory conversation this morning went roughly like this:

She: Seriously, the man questions the president on a daily basis. Do you feel old enough to question the president?

I don't feel old or mature enough to question the president.

Me: This president? Yeah, I feel up to it.

I'm still letting my mother bully talk me into pink-and-green dining room curtains in my office, but I could handle this particular president, I think.

Weather (or not)

A friend who's from Massachusetts originally but who I know from D.C. asked me yesterday if there were any signs of spring up here yet. Apparently he's getting tulips.
Hahahahahaha.
I've shied away from the weather posts lately, because all I'd ever have to say would be "snowed again," and "stopped snowing briefly."
But, just in case you're curious:
Snowed again.
More coming today.

This weekend, we did have a lot of cold rain, which, I suppose, would be a sign of spring, if it hadn't already started snowing again.

The wisdom of playing Quarters (in your mid-30s) (with people who are so competitive they literally tackle)

I am not sure this post can improve upon its title.
So we're doing it call-and-response style.
What do you still want to know? I will answer questions posted as comments honestly.
Probably.

Democracy=Quaint=Ape suits

My friend who is originally from Texas but more recently from Virginia visited this weekend. As we went to my parents' house, she noticed the enormous sign announcing Town Meeting and was delighted.
I know some of you people think it's just something from old books, but it's real, and it's how we make decisions around here. Sometimes, I think it's neat that we do things in this superdemocratic way up here, and sometimes, I am very aware that a neighboring town has had to vote eight times over three years to fund a new school, and last time (last week) they were one vote shy of the two-thirds majority they needed.
For a kind of neat take on the whole thing, see the local newspaper's blog on town meetings in the area.

Baggin' it

This is not one of the posts you're waiting for.
To be totally honest, most of those will probably never come. You don't have to get over it, but if you do, your life will be richer, because you'll be happier with what you have.

Today, we're talking purses.

For three reasons (chronologically):

1. A friend of mine recently reminded me that I used to keep a backpack with a change of clothes in it in my car, so I could just go do stuff on a whim. I like doing stuff on a whim, and even more important, I like the idea of doing stuff on a whim. This was so important to me that I apparently wrote her a poem on the subject, which she still has, because you don't just throw away poetry. Even mine, which is universally terrible.
2. I was working on Beth's questions, and got to, "What's in your purse?" and realized the answer is, "Practically nothing I need. Wallet, phone and keys usually wind up in my pockets. There's probably a lip gloss and some coupons in there."
3. I stumbled across a testimonial for FlyLady's wallet. If you don't know FlyLady yet, or don't know my relationship with her brilliance yet, that's a post for another day (by which I mean, possibly never). But I need a new wallet because mine is in pieces, and doesn't that one look convenient and streamlined?

So, here's the thing: I carry this enormous purse back and forth to work every day, totally unnecessarily. It is a remnant of my former life, when I brought work home with me (also unnecessarily, between us, because I only actually did any of that work at home about once a month). I never even pretend I am doing work at home now, unless it's Web-based, in which case I do not need a giant purse to accommodate it.
So, starting today, no purse. We're trying it for two weeks. If I miss it even once, I'll reconsider. But I bet I don't.
Also today, I am throwing a change of clothes and a spare toothbrush in my backpack, and putting that backpack in my car.
I like doing stuff on a whim.

W'sup

A chronology of recent events for my needy readers:

• Went to New Mexico for a few days that turned into one more than a few
• Came home and was slammed with work, having anticipated missing two days of work and actually having missed three
• Had a lovely visit from frequent commenter kay bailey, involving lots of good fun, an hour sprung forward, and also about ten hours of driving to and from airports or other places near airports
• Slept 11 hours
  
• Had comments whining about the lack of posting from the aforementioned kay bailey, who last posted to her own blog January 15, and mike

Commenters who would like to jump to conclusions publicly are more than welcome to do so in the comments. Can't wait to hear.

Fried ice cream flavored ice cream

Yes, there is such a thing. It's made by Breyer's, and you can apparently get it many places, but not where I live. For a location near you, click here (you'll find it in the product list under "Fun & Indulgent," which, yes. Right on.).
It seems, simultaneously, like such a good and bad idea. In execution, it does not taste like fried ice cream, quite, but it does taste like all the components of fried ice cream (except heat), and that is really, really good.
And I left almost a quart and a half of it, along with some other pretty sweet things, in New Mexico. Hope my new friends Jen and Kim enjoy.

Teases

More coming soon, obviously, and sorry to have been so completely absent.
Upcoming posts may include (but are certainly not limited to):

• Why I hate a certain airline
• The wisdom of playing Quarters (in your mid-30s) (with people who are so competitive they literally tackle)
• Fried ice cream flavored ice cream
• Bruises and puncture wounds
• Red or green
• Why I am glad I am not literally a brain surgeon
• Why I am still weirdly bitter about the every-two-years Olympic schedule

Seen and heard...

...strolling by my office at 5:20, after virtually everyone else is gone:

Some very large dude humming (and then whistling in the stairwell, all the way out the building) "Hail to the Chief."

Tumbleweeds, prairie dogs. Yeah.

I am heading to Santa Fe this weekend.
I had been so focused on a) seeing katiesteele, b) that it will be a tiny bit warmer there c) finding my rock-climbing gear, that I hadn't thought at all about JEWELRY. That's just crazy. Oh, the delights that come with having a scattered brain.
Clearly, there will be some jewelry bought.

But about that rock-climbing gear.
Granted, I haven't been climbing in a long time.
And granted, I am maybe not completely done unpacking from my move yet.
But in Virginia, I knew where my gear was.
Now, I don't know how, in the packing process, my harness and chalk bag wound up in two separate places.
But I am even more puzzled by how I managed to separate my climbing shoes.
Yes, from the harness and the chalk bag. And from each other.
Why would I have done that? How, even? How did I have enough open boxes around at once that I packed those four items separately?

Moral of the story: I am never moving again.

Observation

If you are in your car, and you hit "scan" on your radio (What? I'm driving a 1990 Oldsmobile. You think I'm listening to an iPod in there?), and there are only four stations, and three of them are NPR, and the fourth is alterna-indie-something, you are probably in Vermont.

Awesome, awesome

You know I have no cable, so when I do watch TV, it's online.

Nbc.com has full episodes of a bunch of its older shows online now.

A-Team, anyone? Miami Vice?

All there for your viewing pleasure.

They've got The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, even.
And on abc.com, My So-Called Life.
I feel like this could keep me busy for a while.
Also, everyone? It is your job to tell me when I turn into this guy.

Lousy day

Yesterday was not the very best of days, for no big reason, just lots of little bumps in the road. You know, One Of Those Days. Some days are like that, even in Australia.
So when my friend, who is a teacher in a boarding school, and who I went to visit this weekend, called me and started the conversation with "I have bad news," I braced myself for something traumatic. Obviously, it was only another of the endless little bumps.
"There's been another outbreak of lice. I don't have it, but one of the kids in my house does."
Ugh. Ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh.
Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeew.
Nobody died.
But Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeew.
Th school nurse said for my friend to tell me that I probably was not infested, but that, as a precaution, I should probably soak my head in vinegar.
Naturally, I was too worn out to do that right away. I did what any responsible louse-head would do. I called another friend to see if she wanted to get a beer. She could not. More bumps in the road. Sigh.
So by about 8, I had given up on my day and put on my pajamas and went to do the vinegar thing.
Obviously, all I had, vinegar-wise, was balsamic with some herby stuff in it and red wine vinegar. A few experiments with the best way to soak one's head in red wine vinegar later, my bathroom looked like I'd murdered someone, and I was on the couch, playing solitaire in my pajamas and smelling like a giant pickle (not for the first time, either*), when my friend called back to say she would, after all, like a beer.
The moral of the story is that I can clean up a murder scene, shower, dry my hair and get dressed in about ten minutes if there is a beer in it for me.


*The first time was in a tent on Masai Mara, having gotten the worst sunburn of my life snorkling at noon on the equator. Yes, vinegar is good for sunburn. No, smelling like a pickle does not make you the most popular gal on the safari van.

Dry gas

People who knew me when I lived in D.C. have likely heard my Dry Gas Rant. For those of you who missed it, it goes roughly like this:

I don't know why I can't find dry gas anywhere around here. In New England, you can walk into any gas station, ask if they have dry gas, and they'll show you where it is, and they might even have a whole section of it.
In Washington, it's like they've never heard of it, and when you try to describe it, they look even more confused.
What? You know, dry gas. Dry gas. It's basically a little bottle of rubbing alcohol you dump into your gas tank* to evaporate the water so it doesn't freeze in the line.
You know, dry gas.

I had that conversation so often when I lived (just barely) below the Mason-Dixon line that I started to wonder if I had exaggerated in my mind how ubiquitous it was up here, or if I had maybe made up dry gas (OK, not really, because I could find it in D.C., a couple of dusty bottles at a time, in auto parts stores).
I didn't need it often, because it rarely gets cold enough to really need it down there, but it makes me feel insecure not to have it on those rare occasions when it is that cold.
You'll all be relieved to know that I have wandered into about five gas stations in three northern states looking for dry gas since I moved, and been directed right to it every time.



*Do not literally dump rubbing alcohol in your gas tank. I considered it, often, but if you damage your car or kill yourself doing that, I will not be held responsible. Though I will be very glad if people with any actual knowledge of cars or chemistry use the comments to discuss what would happen.

And the winner is...

Katie, with a total of 14 points, but not by as much of a landslide as she seemed to think. Carl came in with 11 points, Cousin Mouse's tale of my Lyme Disease scored 9, and my messy room as presented by Cousin Mouse racked up a respectable 6 points.
Thank you all for playing. Based on the specific entrants, first prize and runner-up prizes, will likely all be beer in varying quantities.
Now, we return to stories at my expense by me.

Reminder

Voting ends just before midnight tonight.

The Plow King

Just because I know you've all been very, very worried about this, I wanted to give you an update. I have a new plow guy, who came by yesterday while I was at work and did an outstanding job plowing my snow-covered, ice-encrusted driveway.
Mr. Plow is a loser.
Thank you all for your concern.

Call Mr. Plow; that's my name. That name again is Mr. Plow!

If you e-mailed the guy who plows your driveway to make sure he was coming, and got in response an e-mail along these lines:

hi [bzzzzgrrrl] i left you a note on your door the last time i plowed no one came out side that was about 4 weeks ago letting you know that i was not going to plow anymore

Would you take that to mean that he's mad you didn't come out of your house to pay him the last time he was here, and therefore will not plow you again, or would you take it to mean that he was getting out of the plowing business entirely?

Turning 'em away

Hey, friends. So I was thinking we (yes, I think of all of us as a "we," even though many of you have not met each other and likely never will) needed a project, and I almost stole this one from someone else's blog, but then it seemed like a better idea to just send you over to that blog and suggest you take a stab at it. I have been working on it for myself for days now, because I'm like that, and I have discovered a few things:

• It is very easy to get me to start counting how many words there are in every thought I have, apparently.
• I have a lot of thoughts that are ten words.
  
• I like the breeziness but not the possibility of misinterpretation that comes with the universal "you."

So go here, and do this.
You may post what you come up with in the comments here, but it seems nicer to post them in the comments there. Or both.

Let the voting begin

Yeah, yeah, you're all too funny for words.
Now, we will vote in the most complicated way possible. Please, in the comments, rank the stories in order of funny, from most to least.
If you don't know what I'm talking about, click here.
If you missed Carl's story, click here.
If you missed Katie's story, click here.
If you missed my cousin's first story, click here.
If you missed my cousin's second story, click here.

A few of the stories that missed the cut, due to not being submitted or not being submitted properly:

• My record of locking myself out of my house, contrasted with the time I couldn't get my car door to close at the Peking Gourmet.
• The time I broke my grandmother. (The anniversary of that horrible, horrible day was just last week, in fact.)
• The many apartment floods, one of which went undetected, for weeks on end, only to have it turn into an Alpine scene under the carpet.
• The tacky interaction I have had with Kay, involving giving her some pants, borrowing them back, and then "losing" them.
• The time the only organized thing about my move was that I carefully packed the clothes I'd need for the first two weeks in New Hampshire, and then permitted the movers to put that trunk on the truck, resulting in my having only a black velvet dress, a blue T-shirt, and clothes borrowed from Kay.
• The time I bought a cowboy hat in San Francisco on pride weekend, because in that context, it seemed like something I might ever wear again.
• When I took my first copy-editing test, and the only error I made was missing an omitted “l” in “public financing.”
• Several fashion faux pas, primarily but not exclusively in high school, many of which are quite well-documented.
• Several hair faux pas, primarily but not exclusively in my 20s, many of which are quite well-documented.
• The time I drew my bedroom inside out.
• The time my (almost-)prom date got expelled from school a week before the prom, and also, perhaps obviously, grounded.

Do not vote for the bulletted unstories above. Vote only by ranking stories 1, 2, 3 and 4.

Update: Voting will close at 11:59 p.m. (Eastern) on Sunday.

Story #4

From the same cousin as Story #3:

The other story harkens WAY back to when City Mouse was a young teenager and we saw her bedroom. It remains the standard for Ultimate Teenage Messy Room against which all others are measured. I have to say many we've seen since have come close if not equal, including our own teens' rooms. Of course, since they are related to City Mouse, there may be something in the genes.

A Cousin

PS. City Mouse's house is very neat and tidy by comparision. Clearly she is Over It.

Story #3

From a cousin:

A decade or two ago I visited City Mouse when she was recovering from Lyme Disease. The disease had temporarily paralyzed one side of her face. City Mouse smiles a lot, as we all know, but this time half her face was smiling, the other half was not, so she appeared to making a sarcastic grin. This had the effect of coloring every statement she made, from "good to see you!" to "why are you laughing at me?" with heavy irony. It was like adding a silent "not" to every statement.

"That's so cruel! (not)"

"Really, stop! (not)"

"I'm not being funny! (not)"

Poor thing!

Story #2

This one from Katie:

the most entertaining and embarrassing [bzzzzgrrrl] story i am privy to that was not just recounted to me by [bzzzzgrrrl] herself was shortly after her move (back) to [where she lives]. perhaps two or three weeks after arriving back in her old stomping grounds, i was on the phone with her for her walk home from work. [bzzzzgrrrl] lives .8 miles from work, with one turn on the way. we may never know for sure the exact route she took this day, but i have made my best family circus approximation. it started with forgetting to turn on her own road and taking the next right instead, and ended with me mapquesting her way back from probate street, .5 miles away from her house in the opposite direction from work.

most important thing to note: the quarter mile she walked down her own street before turning left and wandering around like a fool.

Story #1

This one comes from my friend Carl, and is the first story I got in actual story form, this morning. I will extend the deadline to midnight tonight, if anyone else wants to get in on the action.

My most memorable and slightly embarassing recollection of [bzzzzgrrrl] in 1993 is as follows: [bzzzzgrrrl] and friends decide that for my birthday it would be fun to "kidnap" me and take me as a surprise to a very large, very good brewery in Virginia. [bzzzzgrrrl] chose to take the lead in my capture. So with the rest of our friends surrounding me, [bzzzzgrrrl] grabs me around the shoulders from behind in a bear hug. Since this was surprise, I though [bzzzzgrrrl] just was being playful, and wanted to wrestle. So I immediately dropped to the floor and started to pivot in order to get the pin. So [bzzzzgrrrl] says in her most stern, "your messing up our careful plan" tone of voice: "Stop struggling, Carl, we're just trying to take you out for a good time" Best laid plans of mice and men.

To be fair, I do not actually remember this happening. But it does sound like me. And like Carl.

Expense report

So I have a few friends who, for different reasons, are having a hard time right now. If you are one of those folks, big hug to you right now.
One friend who is having a hard time e-mailed me today, and I e-mailed back with, "Let me know if there's anything I can do to help, including but not limited to telling you funny stories at my own expense."
It occurs to me that that is, like, 72 percent of what I have to offer to people generally, and, like, 97 percent of what I have to offer as a blogger.
So, first-ever City Mouse Country contest, in the interest of providing a steady source to those who need it.
If you know me personally, e-mail me (rather than using the "comments" link) with a funny story at my expense. Heck, e-mail me several, if you like.
I will post everything that is true and not too terrifying to put on the Internet where my parents will likely see it. The person who sends the best one will win a prize. "Best" will be determined by voting. Get submissions in by Sunday at 11:59 p.m., but I'll start running them as soon as I start getting them.

*Gasp*

According to my compass/whistle/magnifying glass/thermometer/keychain, it is 80 degrees in my office right now (and my window faces north).
And you thought I'd be cold in New Hampshire.