I am ultra-professional today in a hot pink polo shirt and the cords I wore on Monday.

Yes, jonzo, it’s true. I like pink.

Hey, if any of you asked me questions about the first list I made, I answered them as best I could in the comments for that entry. By the way.

So DaveG linked Musical Taste in one of his increasingly sporadic posts, and I went to check it out last night and found that it’s quite cool indeed.

One of the most recent track recommendations on the home page is Steely Dan’s “Kid Charlemagne,” from The Royal Scam. Although the person who recommended it cited it as being from A Decade of Steely Dan, and that’s technically true, it was first found on TRS.

And man, do I love that song. So I had to listen to the Dan today on the way in to work, and I chose A Decade of… as my musical selection for today. Well, after Sam and Jay and I listened to BSB on the way to their schools, that is.

Steely Dan is quite possibly the greatest studio band ever. If you consider yourself a fan of good music and don’t know Steely Dan, shame on you. Go immediately and find some of their stuff.

You can find a thorough background here, on the official site.

In a nutshell: brilliant songwriting and musical genius.

In addition to all that, Donald Fagen has the most incredibly wry quality to his voice that I find irresistible. In the same way that you know without thinking twice that Michael McDonald is singing backup vocals on “Peg,” I think I’d recognize Fagen’s voice speaking softly on a crowded subway car.

I almost hate to make this comparison, but here it goes. Art Alexakis of Everclear has this tendency to kind of tilt his head from side to side when he’s singing. Look for it the next time you run across one of their videos. It’s a really affected physical tic, and when you see it, it sometimes has the effect of making you feel as if he’s telling you a story you should already know.

Fagen doesn’t need to put on a head tilt, because he achieves the same effect with his voice, and because Fagen and Becker’s lyrics are just so smart. And I really wanted to give an example but I just don’t know where to begin.

I saw a question posed somewhere about music that changed one’s life. This is some of mine. Surprisingly, the first song that ever stuck with me was “Dirty Work,” and Fagen doesn’t even sing lead vocals on it. And that’s probably why it’s not one of my favorites anymore.

“Kid Charlemagne” is up there, but “Deacon Blues” wins, hands down. It’s on Aja, and while I agree with many critics who cite Aja as Steely Dan’s musical peak, and I do love that album, I still have a special place in my heart for every track on Can’t Buy a Thrill.

I’m not a snob. If you were to buy only one of their albums, A Decade of Steely Dan is a good solid place to start. I’m not a huge fan of their recent work, but nearly everything else is a winner.

And with that, I’ve got some stuff to do.

I’m in bed, and at the moment am more obsessed with lists than usual. Like Annika, I’m fascinated by this stuff, and besides, I’m totally aware that I’m substituting lists for substance.

With all that said, here’s what’s on my bedside table:

• beige crackly lamp with a lampshade with leaves and flowers pressed into it

• bag of green M&Ms leftover from valentine’s day

• cordless phone (unplugged)

• purple flowered box of tissues

• vanilla mint chapstick

• purple uniball pen

• small flash light

• travel alarm clock

• bottle of dasani water, half-empty

• bottle of “great value” water, half-empty (dude. I’m like that girl from Signs.)

• card of claritin tabs

• bottle of vitamins

• bottle of nasacort, to keep me breathing

• can of diet coke, half-empty (consumption in progress)

• bottle of johnson’s baby lotion

• rimmel lasting finish nail polish in “innocent pink”

• remote control for TV

• remote control for DVD player

• case for a mix CD

• case for the Playing By Heart soundtrack

• paper journal

• pad of post-it notes with hex codes jotted down

• pad of post-it notes with a conversation transcribed in my strange shorthand

• pamphlet for patrice leconte’s latest film, man on the train

• paperback: one hundred years of solitude

• paperback: the return of the king

• paperback: three junes

And in about five minutes, my glasses will be there too, because I am going to sleep.

On my computer cart at work:

• phone

• computer monitor

• rubber ladybug coaster from o.r.e. housewares

• one empty bottle of dannon water

• one half-empty bottle of poland spring water

• one half-empty bottle of diet pepsi (consumption in progress)

• bottle cap for the diet pepsi

• bottle cap for a winning diet dr. pepper

• plastic spoon

• red pilot precise v7 pen (capless)

• a piece of a plastic picture frame

• a paper clip

• speakers

• a glass mug containing: two sharpies, a blue marker, a purple marker, and a pencil

• tissues

• floppy disk box

• bottle of advil

• bottle of aleve

• five, count ‘em, five pads of post-it notes, some with writing

• 4 post-it notes unattached to pads

• a red paper clip attached to one of the post-its for no reason

• a foam shark

• a tiny teak bud vase with a pink paper umbrella in it

• a calculator

• keyboard

• mouse

• mouse pad

Like you care.

I have a thoughtful entry coming tonight or tomorrow – whenever I find time.

Augh. I can’t talk about what I need to talk about here. Maybe in a few days.

In other news- I stopped at the campus bookstore today on my way in to work and picked up a couple of things on my staff charge account (payroll deduction, woot). For the record: push pins, a Diet Dr. Pepper, and a CD. If you care: it was the latest Doves album. I’m slow on the uptake sometimes.

So the dude working the register puts all my stuff in the bag, and as he goes to put the CD in I’m like “hey there, dude, you have to take that plastic thing off the CD.”

He says, “I do?”

And I say “yeah, ’cause I sure can’t do it. You need a special tool for it.”

He is absolutely oblivious and has to go get help. Like seriously, has he never purchased a CD before?

My weekend was mellow. I had to work last night. I may have to work Saturday; I am still checking on that. I’m really hoping I don’t.

Last night was full of turmoil, as it was the first night of the calling program I run. I had to cancel training on Thursday due to the storm, so I had to spend the first half of last night catching some students up on the training session they missed. And then we began calling.

You know, I was planning not to curse in front of my students this year.

But then as we began calling I realized that we were going to have to pull out a huge chunk of our prospect base, because we couldn’t very well solicit anyone on the coast, or in DC, or, as it turned out, in much of the inland areas either. Before I knew it, the words “ah, shit” somehow made it past my lips. They all laughed.

They really laughed at the end of the night when I slammed my thumb in my file box and blurted out “holy FUCK” as blood started gushing everywhere.

It ripped a huge chunk of skin off my hand. So I had to leave a new supervisor to do all the check-out while I busied myself with the first-aid kit.

It’s a day later and the cut is not deep, but it covers a large surface area and the stupid thing just keeps oozing. And it hurts like hell. So I’m all bandaged up and typing kind of awkwardly.

Oh, and I have cramps. Ugh.

Happy Monday.

I think I’m getting ready to kill off the tiki whore. You’ve been warned.

So…yeah. Apparently in the Roanoke/Lynchburg area, all the wind was at my house. Because we had no power for a few hours yesterday, and some trees were down, and stuff, and on my way in to work today there was tree debris coating the roads on the way out of my neighborhood. But then once I got on the main road there was nothing. And my coworkers tell me that it wasn’t bad here last night at all. So we’re on a normal schedule today. But I’m leaving early because I have to work on Sunday. Ugh.

Ha- I was just checking email while writing this and I see that ABV has asked for what occasion one would purchase a battery-operated television. And it turns out that the reason we have it is kind of funny indeed. So I’ll tell you about it.

My mother works at a veteran’s hospital, which has a canteen. The canteen is tax-free and carries an assortment of stuff, and you can buy it using payroll deduction if you work at the hospital.

So my mom, who never used to be a shopper, has been bringing random shit home from the canteen on at least a weekly basis.

It’s become a running joke at our house – she’ll show up wearing or using yet another new item, and we’ll ask where it came from, and before she can even answer we stop ourselves and go, “Wait. Let me guess. The canTEEEN.” And she just responds with a sheepish grin.

Not only is Mom a canteen shopaholic, but she also has a tendency to buy things that she really wants but feels guilty about purchasing. So she works through this buyer’s guilt by calling it a “gift” for someone in our household.

That’s how we got the little TV.

We had absolutely no use for it. It’s color, handheld, and I know I said the screen was five inches yesterday but actually it’s only about three inches.

My mom thought it was cool and bought it “for my dad.” I have no idea how much she paid for it. When she gave it to him (for Christmas? I’m not sure) he was like “uhhhh, thanks.” And then, not surprisingly, my mom was the one who played with it all the time.

She’d sit in the living room and watch it while we were watching something else on the big screen TV six feet away. Sometimes she’d watch the same show on her little TV that we were watching on the big TV.

But mostly it was a useless little trinket, a novelty. Until last night.

It’s really a testament to how dependent we’ve become on electricity that our power was out for about five hours last night (with a half-hour fakeout of being on), and about two hours into it we were bored out of our skulls. We were fine, reading and coloring in coloring books until it began to get dark.

We had the hurricane lamp lit, and we had flashlights, but it was a pain in the ass to read with them after we lost daylight, so we just sat around and stared at each other. I got on the computer on battery power. We told dirty jokes and sang bad songs.

We got the little TV out to check the weather forecast, and when 7:30 rolled around, we cranked that sucker up and played along with Jeopardy!

And then, at 8, we propped it up on the kitchen counter, stood around it eating KFC on paper plates, and watched Survivor till the power came back on around 9.

Pathetic? Maybe. But you know what else? We had a great time.

And yes, we’re glad Mom came across that little trinket at the canteen.