It's a work thing. We have about 30 marketing peeps in town from all over the globe. I have eaten 3 meals a day with work people for the last 3 business days. We are going to feed our guests hotdogs and they will love us.
Tuesday, June 13, 2006
I am leaving for the Twins game in a few minutes
It's a work thing. We have about 30 marketing peeps in town from all over the globe. I have eaten 3 meals a day with work people for the last 3 business days. We are going to feed our guests hotdogs and they will love us.
Sunday, June 11, 2006
Crap that is piled upon my coffee table
One candle. Cream. Unscented.
Currents from the Dancing River: Contemporary Latino Fiction, for lesson planning creative writing classes for immigrants.
Photo negatives, mostly from New Year’s Eve in New York.
A photograph of me, taken by me, in my bathroom because there is better light, for a trial on-line dating profile. The trial is going swimmingly well, assuming I want to date John Lovitz.
A box of 4 gourmet chocolates, the latest copy of GQ Magazine, a Sudoku book, a crumpled map of Indiana Amish country saved from the last time I saw him: All items for a care package for Josh who is a pilot in the navy, and just left for three months at sea.
A piece of particle board with a stretched piece of watercolor paper glued to it.
A surgical technique manual for a titanium intervertebral disc cage, designed for both anterior and posterior implementation.
An exam: “1. From the superior to the inferior, list the five major regions of the spine; indicate the type of curvature it has. Write the tame of each component of a typical vertebra on the spaces provided.”
Two ink pens.
A small rock.
A receipt from Nina’s Coffee Shop.
A postcard from Greece.
Sunday, June 04, 2006
How many women I crammed into my attic apartment last night: 13
How long Kate and Tim have been in love: 20 monthsDays till their wedding: 55
Time Kate will rise on her wedding day in order to put on her gown and hike a leg up on a tree (we’ll be camping) to strap on a garter belt in the middle of the wilderness in time for her dawn ceremony: 4:30 AM.
How many penis shaped cakes I baked yesterday: 2
How many Ben dropped on his foul kitchen floor: 2
How many penis-shaped cakes Ben baked yesterday: 2
How many women I crammed into my attic apartment last night: 13
How many jell-o shots someone brought to my house: 8 million
How many I consumed: 2
How many the bride consumed: approximately 9
How many times she yacked: 0. That I know of. [Update: Make that 2.]
How many times she drunk-dialed the groom: 2
How long my parents have been married: 35 years
How long they were engaged: 3 months
How long it’s been since my younger sister disappeared for a month and came home married to a man 25 years older than her: 5 years
How many family members have been married in the same small town church with the most gorgeous stained glass windows ever: 8
How many babies those couples had: 20
How many dance clubs we attended last night: 3
How many we rides we took in a black stretch limo: 1
How much we paid for said limo: $6
How many times I had my ass pinched: 3
How many bathrooms I peed in and, using the well-honed skills I learned at college frat parties, managed not to touch a single thing except TP: 3
How many guys bought me a drink: 1
Number of times we heard the song “Baby Got Back”: 4
Number of women in the “Baby Got Back” video who actually have a large ass: 0
Number of times I thought to myself, “Dear God, I am too old for this”: 1,000,000
How many trips to the spa my friends are getting me to thank me for hosting this madness: 1. Yay.
In my 4th grade diary, how old I said I expected to be when I got married: 30
How many times I’ve informally been proposed to: 3
Age I was when my grandmother told me she’d never live to see the day I found a husband and gave me my wedding gift early: 23
Her age on her wedding day: 29
My age now: 29
How often I use the non-wedding gift she gave me: Almost daily
How many times I’ve been asked out this year: 3
How many dates I said yes to: 3
How many of these men are gay: 1
How many of whom had a degree: The gay one.
Days since I heard “I love you” from a man: 1 day
Miles apart I am from that man: 10,629
How many internet dates I’ve been on, total: 4
How many I had a second date with: 1
How many were totally freaks: 0
How long its been since I went on an internet date: 10 months
How many men I’ve met not on the internet (since I moved here) who turned out to be freaks: 5
How many feather boas were in my bed when I woke up this morning: 2
How much random shit I found strewn about my house when I got up:
1 stray sock
1 make-up bag
1 purple bra
7 lemons
1 vibrating cock ring
1 card that said “I dare you to kiss a stranger”
2 jars of frosting
1 t-shirt
1 bag of shredded coconut
6,958 nearly empty cups of God-knows-what drinks
1 dry-erase marker.
How many gallons of warm, sugary, rummy, nauseating Mojito mix I dumped down the toilet this morning: 1
Leftovers I am most excited to chow down on: Mexican layer dip, mixed nuts, wedge of brie.
What’s left of the penis-shaped cakes: 2 cherry-chip testicles
How many bags of trash I hauled to the dumpster: 6
How many drinks I mopped off the floor: 1
What I am going to do with 7 lemons: I have no idea.
The number of years that will pass before I do another jell-o shot, make a penis cake or dance to “It’s Getting Hot in Here/So Take off All Your Clothes”: 3,593,559,293
How many friends I’ve held up the giant hoop of her wedding dress for so she could go pee at her own reception: 3
How much more important it is to have a great partner than any of the wedding stuff: 100x
How nice it is to have both, if that’s what you want: Quite nice, I'm sure.
How much better it is to be single right now than in something that isn’t right: 16 tons
How it feels right now knowing that I’m not vulnerable to or responsible for a relationship: Light as a Feather
How jazzed I’ll be if I find an excellent partner: Super, super jazzed
How urgent is it to find a partner: Not at all.
How it feels to see two wonderful friends fall deeply in love and make each other very, very happy: Amazing.
How it feels to have your friend tell you 10 times in one night that she loves you, and that this is just the kind of girl’s night she wanted: Worth every dropped and re-baked penis cake.
How sure I am that these two punks are a fantastic match: 100%
How weepy and happy will I be at their wedding: Very.
Thursday, June 01, 2006
The Delights of Anger
"Something happens to people in the sunbelt. I believe the constant overdose of vitamin D has softened my skull and turned me nice, so that I've started to act like a nice person--though maybe with a little more of it I will overdose and just come into my own nastiness. For it is innate, at my core. The true flowering of my being is bored and acidic and annoyed with the incredible idiots who surround me." --Stacey Richter, "Christ Their Lord." Tin House, v21
The AC in my car is dead. My car is sitting, unrepairable, in the parking lot of the shop, to which I have no ride. I have 20 people coming to my house for a barbecue in, oh, a half hour, and my GRILL is in my TRUNK. Of said car. In said parking lot. On the other side of the TCs. [Update: I left a half-dozen friends at my house to go pick up the car, which had my grill in the trunk, but it was locked in the mechanic's lot. Ever heard of a Wok-a-que? Me neither.]
CAAAARAAAAAP.
My parents were here last weekend. When they arrived, my mother sent my father back out to the car to get the flower they’d picked for me from our back yard and hauled all the way up here in a wet paper towel from Indiana. When Dad was out the door and out of earshot—and you have to understand that my father is the calmest, sweetest, mellowest, most serene fellow alive—my mom leans over to me and says, “Honey, your father had road rage on the way here.” Road rage? I picture someone screaming explicatives while pointing a shotgun out a pick-up window at an old granny going too slowly in her Oldsmobile. “Dad?” I said.
“We were somewhere outside Madison,” so they’d been in the car for, oh, 6 out of 12 hours, “And someone merged and cut your dad off, and he said Fuck You, Goddamnfrickinffrackingblahbluhdeblah.”
That’s the thing about being pissed: he’d been on the road for hours, there was no end in sight. He’d been stuck with my mother, which can be enough to set off a string of F-bombs in itself, and was tired, hungry and had just braved the Dan Ryan on a holiday weekend during construction. We all have the capacity for so much annoying shit before one small, last thing will set it off. When the cup-o-anger is full, the smallest thing can cause it to runneth over.
That is me. Right now. My boss touching my computer screen with her grimy Cheetoes fingers one more GD time would send me through the roof. Furthermore, the fellow I’ve got a giant crush on just asked my friend out, and she told me aaaalllll about it. I feel like I’m in the sixth grade again, when My True Love, Shane, asked me to ask my friend Toni if he would dance with her, and I misunderstood him and thought he asked ME to dance, so I said yes, I’ll dance with you, and he said, No, I said Do you think TONI would dance with me. Not you. That’s how good I feel about today’s episode. However, unlike the sixth grade, I am now old enough to know he is not the love of my life, or even close to it, and I am old enough to come home and drink the white wine that is cooling in my refrigerator, instead of walking the three blocks home in tears. I mean really.
It isn't just those little things, y'all. I've had a winter that, let me tell you (without the details), has filled my cup-'o-tolorance to the brim. Anger. Growl. I find myself wrapping myself on the knuckles for the venomous, bitter dialogue of nastiness running through my mind on days like today. A chipper suburban moron in khaki pants gives me a Minnesota-fake “Howdy!” in the hall at work when I’m on my way out the door to Chili’s (I loathe Chili’s) for a business lunch, and I want to tell her (but don’t tell her) to get a GD personality and a decent pair of pants. It’s not pretty, and it is all quite illogical. However, it feels good sometimes, and frankly, nastiness holds significant value. First of all, because nastiness, on occasion, just feels damn good, especially when one does not apologize for it. There is far too little irreverence in life, and faaaarr to little in Minnesota. Once, I went to the CC Club hoping for an infusion of irreverence, but the almost-intimidating, overly-pierced greaseball who carded me gave me advice on how to keep my engine block from freezing. Minnesota. Jeesh. Portland—now there’s a town for a good whopping dose of satisfying irreverence. I love both cities for very different reasons, but I digress.
Forcing oneself to see the bright side, to make lemonade, to appreciate every single thing one has every frickin’ minute of the day, that’s crap, my friends. Reigning in the ‘tude may be good for general day-to-day attitude maintenance, but sometimes, it is best to freak the hell out for a while. Break a few plates, perhaps, or scream FuckYouYouFuckinFuck to the guy who merges wrong in Madison. For the love of God, don’t smear fake Cheeto goop all over my cubicle, and If you’d rather date a woman whose favorite song is ‘My Humps,’ then bloody well go for it. When the glittering fabric of life shines about as much as the roller towel in a Tijuana men’s bathroom, then, hey, tell off your mechanic or smash something expensive or bitch out the wench that stole your cab at 5 a.m. when you’re late for the airport (Hi, Relish!). Freaking out dusts life off, and before you know it, it’ll start to shine a little bit, and you’ll be better equipped to deal with the dirt.
So, back to my dad: He came back inside with a most gorgeous iris for me, his middle daughter, and he hugged me, and smiled really big, and he rested. I made him some tea, and we talked. Minutes after I went to bed, my dad came into my room and was scuffling around near the open door to my balcony. “What are you doing?” I said.
“I found a little lady bug,” he said, “so I’m trying to shoo her out the door.” He gently picked her up and placed her on the leaf of my petunia on the balcony, and went to bed, and slept very, very well.
The AC in my car is dead. My car is sitting, unrepairable, in the parking lot of the shop, to which I have no ride. I have 20 people coming to my house for a barbecue in, oh, a half hour, and my GRILL is in my TRUNK. Of said car. In said parking lot. On the other side of the TCs. [Update: I left a half-dozen friends at my house to go pick up the car, which had my grill in the trunk, but it was locked in the mechanic's lot. Ever heard of a Wok-a-que? Me neither.]CAAAARAAAAAP.
My parents were here last weekend. When they arrived, my mother sent my father back out to the car to get the flower they’d picked for me from our back yard and hauled all the way up here in a wet paper towel from Indiana. When Dad was out the door and out of earshot—and you have to understand that my father is the calmest, sweetest, mellowest, most serene fellow alive—my mom leans over to me and says, “Honey, your father had road rage on the way here.” Road rage? I picture someone screaming explicatives while pointing a shotgun out a pick-up window at an old granny going too slowly in her Oldsmobile. “Dad?” I said.
“We were somewhere outside Madison,” so they’d been in the car for, oh, 6 out of 12 hours, “And someone merged and cut your dad off, and he said Fuck You, Goddamnfrickinffrackingblahbluhdeblah.”
That’s the thing about being pissed: he’d been on the road for hours, there was no end in sight. He’d been stuck with my mother, which can be enough to set off a string of F-bombs in itself, and was tired, hungry and had just braved the Dan Ryan on a holiday weekend during construction. We all have the capacity for so much annoying shit before one small, last thing will set it off. When the cup-o-anger is full, the smallest thing can cause it to runneth over.
That is me. Right now. My boss touching my computer screen with her grimy Cheetoes fingers one more GD time would send me through the roof. Furthermore, the fellow I’ve got a giant crush on just asked my friend out, and she told me aaaalllll about it. I feel like I’m in the sixth grade again, when My True Love, Shane, asked me to ask my friend Toni if he would dance with her, and I misunderstood him and thought he asked ME to dance, so I said yes, I’ll dance with you, and he said, No, I said Do you think TONI would dance with me. Not you. That’s how good I feel about today’s episode. However, unlike the sixth grade, I am now old enough to know he is not the love of my life, or even close to it, and I am old enough to come home and drink the white wine that is cooling in my refrigerator, instead of walking the three blocks home in tears. I mean really.
It isn't just those little things, y'all. I've had a winter that, let me tell you (without the details), has filled my cup-'o-tolorance to the brim. Anger. Growl. I find myself wrapping myself on the knuckles for the venomous, bitter dialogue of nastiness running through my mind on days like today. A chipper suburban moron in khaki pants gives me a Minnesota-fake “Howdy!” in the hall at work when I’m on my way out the door to Chili’s (I loathe Chili’s) for a business lunch, and I want to tell her (but don’t tell her) to get a GD personality and a decent pair of pants. It’s not pretty, and it is all quite illogical. However, it feels good sometimes, and frankly, nastiness holds significant value. First of all, because nastiness, on occasion, just feels damn good, especially when one does not apologize for it. There is far too little irreverence in life, and faaaarr to little in Minnesota. Once, I went to the CC Club hoping for an infusion of irreverence, but the almost-intimidating, overly-pierced greaseball who carded me gave me advice on how to keep my engine block from freezing. Minnesota. Jeesh. Portland—now there’s a town for a good whopping dose of satisfying irreverence. I love both cities for very different reasons, but I digress.
Forcing oneself to see the bright side, to make lemonade, to appreciate every single thing one has every frickin’ minute of the day, that’s crap, my friends. Reigning in the ‘tude may be good for general day-to-day attitude maintenance, but sometimes, it is best to freak the hell out for a while. Break a few plates, perhaps, or scream FuckYouYouFuckinFuck to the guy who merges wrong in Madison. For the love of God, don’t smear fake Cheeto goop all over my cubicle, and If you’d rather date a woman whose favorite song is ‘My Humps,’ then bloody well go for it. When the glittering fabric of life shines about as much as the roller towel in a Tijuana men’s bathroom, then, hey, tell off your mechanic or smash something expensive or bitch out the wench that stole your cab at 5 a.m. when you’re late for the airport (Hi, Relish!). Freaking out dusts life off, and before you know it, it’ll start to shine a little bit, and you’ll be better equipped to deal with the dirt.
So, back to my dad: He came back inside with a most gorgeous iris for me, his middle daughter, and he hugged me, and smiled really big, and he rested. I made him some tea, and we talked. Minutes after I went to bed, my dad came into my room and was scuffling around near the open door to my balcony. “What are you doing?” I said.
“I found a little lady bug,” he said, “so I’m trying to shoo her out the door.” He gently picked her up and placed her on the leaf of my petunia on the balcony, and went to bed, and slept very, very well.
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