Well, crap. I just got all stupid and clicked on a link that made my entry go away.

Twice.

So anyway. What had I said? Hmm. Oh. Mindy and I got Japanese food today and it was awesome. This Japanese place where we went has this big vat of stuff called “Yum Yum Sauce.” They charge you extra if you order carryout and want more Yum Yum Sauce than the little plastic vat they give you. Its ingredients are allegedly a big secret but it’s sort of mayonnaisey and has some pinkish-red stuff in it. Probably babies, I think.

I am leaving at 4:30 today for an Appointment (and by Appointment I mean “basketball scrimmage”) and then I am taking tomorrow off and then Thursday is Thanksgiving, woo. And then Friday I get paid, WOO! I have ambitious goals for the weekend which involve consumption of alcohol. I don’t have to be back until Monday.

Next weekend I am going to Charlotte with Mindy to visit Boss, where we shall consume more alcohol and probably buy stuff.

The weekend after that was supposed to be my business/pleasure trip to Albany/Rochester (and how I combined the two is a feat of brilliance that requires its own entry, except not really) but that has been postponed and I will be taking it right after New Year’s instead.

The weekend after THAT is when my Christmas vacation starts. Working in higher education rocks, y’all. Except when it blows chunks.

In the meantime are many holiday-type dinners and feasts and food parties and such, where I shall gain about forty pounds and blame it on a pregnancy. Also in the meantime are basketball games and my parents’ 25th wedding anniversary.

So I’ve been fairly busy today getting a bunch of mailings ready for my assistant to work on tomorrow while I’m out. It’s a job that requires a lot of waiting so in the meantime I’ve been reading archives of Tomato Nation and listening to Launchcast.

Hey, here’s what’s on my Launchcast station as of now. I know, I know, some of it is really lame (and I’m looking at your pretentious pseudo-rock asses, Counting Crows) but that’s not the point. Here’s the list:

‘Til Tuesday
Aimee Mann
Coldplay
Kelly Clarkson
Barenaked Ladies
Belle & Sebastian
Chicago
Eric Clapton
John Coltrane
Counting Crows
The Cure
The Dandy Warhols
Miles Davis
Depeche Mode
The Doors
Duke Ellington
Ella Fitzgerald
Fleetwood Mac
G. Love & Special Sauce
Goo Goo Dolls
Guster
Jimi Hendrix
Billie Holiday
Etta James
Jack Johnson
Jason Mraz
Love
Matchbox Twenty
Outkast
Charlie Parker
Peter Gabriel
The Police
Queen
R.E.M.
Red Hot Chili Peppers
Simple Minds
The Smiths
Steely Dan
Sting
Stone Temple Pilots
Tears For Fears
U2
Yo La Tengo
Los Amigos Invisibles
John Mayer
Clay Aiken

Now. I love music and I’m always looking for new stuff. So use my comments to suggest some. That would be awesome.

I’ll probably be a little sporadic for the next few days, so let me wish you all a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday right now in case it’s a while before I get around to writing again.

Eat up!

My mom is so scatterbrained. I come by it honestly.

My mom is capable of focusing her attention on exactly one thing at any given time. You never know if it’s going to be you or something else. And she gets distracted really easily.

We caught on to this early and decided to make it work in our favor.

Example:

We want popsicles. We ask Mom about fifty thousand times if we can have popsicles. Mom says no, and that if we ask again we’ll never have another popsicle as long as we live.

The phone rings. We watch and wait.

When we feel that Mom has become solidly engrossed in her phone conversation, we tiptoe to the freezer. Without a word we hand her the popsicle in its white wrapper.

She absent-mindedly unwraps it, snaps the twin pop in half, and hands half to each of us.

Score!

A few minutes later she’ll finish her phone conversation and hang up, only to find us standing there grinning like evil little monkeys, with red or purple (never orange) popsicle melt clinging to our faces and hands.

“I thought I said no popsicles!” she’ll yell.

“You gave it to us!” we’ll reply with all the injured melodrama of the wrongfully accused.

But then finally, being a mom, she wised up and made a rule that we weren’t allowed to disturb her at all when she was on the phone, unless one of us was

• a) missing a limb; or
• b) bleeding to death.

These two rules became the cardinal rules of our household. No tattling unless one of the two conditions was in place. No waking parents up in the middle of the night unless one of the two conditions was in place.

Sometimes she’ll still ask us that today.

“Mom, I feel like crap.”

“Are you missing a limb?”

“Well…no.”

“Are you bleeding to death?”

“No.”

“Then you’re fine. Take some Advil.”

My mom was twenty-five years old in that first picture yesterday. I’m almost twenty-four and cannot imagine raising a child without accidentally leaving it at the grocery store one day and forgetting all about it, like some people do with jugs of milk. (Actually, Mom did that this weekend, come to think of it. Heh.) I’m shocked and impressed that she managed to raise us with minimal incidents at that age.

Oh, the woman in the other picture is my aunt, by the way. She’s really short.

I was so totally pissed when Ginny was born.

She got all the attention.

I hated her.

But I don’t anymore.

Usually.

So I had this whole entry almost written and then I got crazy hyper fingers and accidentally clicked the little house instead of opening a new window and poof, there it went.

It sucked anyway.

So I know the secret of One-A-Day WeightSmart vitamins.

They make you hurl, see.

I guess One-A-Day BulimiaSmart didn’t have quite the ring to it.

I guess they might make you lose weight because you throw up all day when you take one.

I bought them several months ago and couldn’t figure it out for the longest time. I was barfing all the time there and I was like “what’s up, I never throw up!” and then finally I realized it was the vitamins. They’re tummy bombs or something. So I stopped taking them.

Oh, argh, I just remembered that I need to rant about something. I’ll try to keep it brief.

If you have children, don’t waste your holier-than-thou breath saying things like the following to me:

• “You’ll understand when you have kids.”
• “You don’t understand, because you don’t have children.”
• “You’ll know what I mean when you have a family of your own.”

This is particularly obnoxious and nauseating when I haven’t even made any comments that might lead you to believe that I think I know what it’s like to have children.

Oh, and by the way, I do have a family. And it’s bigger than yours. And I live with my family, and I drive my sisters around, and I go to their volleyball games and their basketball games and their softball games and their band concerts and so on and on and on.

I would never dream of saying “You’re old, so you don’t understand,” or “You’re rich, so you don’t really know where I’m coming from,” or anything along those lines. Why? Because it’s inappropriate, impolite, and quite often completely irrelevant.

Have kids. Love your kids. Go to their choir concerts and their violin lessons and their tennis lessons and their school conferences. Tuck them in at night. Wake them up with kisses in the morning. Frame their drawings and put them on your office walls.

Brag about them all you want to. Show me pictures and I promise I’ll say nice things about them, even if they’re ugly little rat bastards. Tell me of their accomplishments and why they are so special to you.

But keep your fucking presumptuous comments to yourself.

I found my backup contacts, the ones that were tainted with jalapeno juice from the time I made guacamole this summer (and that was some kick-ass guac, if I do say so myself). Opened up the case to find that the right one, the replacement for the one I’d lost, was all dried up. I hoped and prayed and doused it with some solution and put the cap back on and waited.

Hours later, it was all good. The contact had plumped back up and even the pepper taint was gone.

I’d wear glasses every day if I had the cool SNL-news-anchor ones, but I don’t. My glasses are very standard.

I’m having trouble concentrating but I’m plugging along. I’ve hated my hour-long commute for the last few days because it gives me too much time to think. I try to blast upbeat music and sing along. Sometimes it helps.

I need to pee but I’m too lazy to take the short walk across the hall to the bathroom. I can actually see the bathroom from where I sit and it’s just too far to go.

I can’t believe Thanksgiving is next week.

I need to clean my room and change my overhead light bulb. The two dim lamps are not enough light for me.

I’m a money-saver’s worst nightmare when it comes to electricity. I like my rooms flooded with light. I had like four lamps in my dorm room. I’ve been known to dawdle in the shower. I’ve been known to turn the sink on to wash my face and forget about it while I take off jewelry or tidy up the counter.

When I lived in an apartment that included all utilities in the rent, my roommate and I got into the horrible, terrible habit of leaving the refrigerator open while we cooked. Luckily I’ve broken that nasty habit, but the propensity is still there, I think.

I’m really tired and crampy and the weather sucks and I don’t have much to talk about.