109 posts from 2007

First of all, yep, my brother is getting married, and double yep, his fiancee is totally lovable (and i don't say that just because my siblings and their significant others read this).  I'm going to have TWO sister-like sisters-in-law!  It's been a fact for about two weeks now, but I didn't want to mention it until my brother tacitly approved.  This owing to a family tradition that I blog everything, constantly.  My family fears (and hopes for?) becoming the Sedaris family -- that one day I will write famous stories all about them, and that this blog is just the beginning.  Soon, the world will know how much we talk about poop at the dinner table.  MUA-HAHAHAH!

I wonder if I should tell them that maybe thirty people read this blog in toto.  Dooce I am not.  Also, I probably talk about my mad love for The New Pornographers about as much as I talk about my family. 

Yesterday, Lyzo and K-Jo came over for dinner and hilarity (and we went to see Juno, which was SUCH a good little movie.  I love it like I loved Waitress).  K-Jo spanked us all in Scrabble, finally revealing that yes, she is good at everything.

The year wanes, and as I will be spending the first few days of the new year at a YMCA camp at the Minnesotan/Canadian border (running sled dogs, cleaning cabins, sitting in a sauna, doing a polar-bear swim), this may be my last blogular post of 2007.  I won't even have a drunk post on New Year's Eve, likely, as I will probably not be getting drunk.  2007 was a rough year on a lot of people I know, a year of people having to face horrible grown up situations.  So I'm going to list things that were totally rad about this year to round it off on a positive note:

1) Moving to the Twin Cities (topography!  living with my best friend!).  Hasn't been easy, has been worth it.
2) Gin Ocean:  Probably the greatest party ever.
3) Concerts and shows: The New Pornographers, Damien Rice, David Sedaris, etc...  I LOVE THIS TOWN (these towns?)
4) Saying Rad.  Apparently, this is the year I picked up that word, and I say it about as much as Pineapple says "boned"
5) The series finale of Gilmore Girls.  I laughed, I cried, I forgave them for the whole Christopher disaster.  Sort of.
6) Challengers and Armchair Apocrypha
7) The Chicago Weekend of Madness with the Starlet -- Roscoes!  Piercing my nose! 
8) Blizzard Week with the Dwarf Star -- nothing like losing your electricity and
9) Tearing up the dance floor with Bubbles at our friends' wedding.  Actually, the whole wedding. 
10) Going to Waitress by myself when the rest of the world went to Pirates of the Caribbean. 
11) Anytime after that time when I watched Waitress again
12) Canoing around the lake with my mom while I sang "The Mariner's Revenge Song."
13) Being on a boat at another lake with my teenage cousins and talking about boys
14) Dressing up like Leslie Hall for Halloween, and the Atacolypse.
15) Watching The Devil's Diary with Pineapple.  Best terrible movie ever made.

Resolutions for Aught Eight?

Stay rad.  Only resolution I need. 

Lyz-o found this:  http://www.onesentence.org/

I think my brother mentioned it, too.  Some of the stories are interesting, some are sad, some are funny, some are trite.  As for my own stories in one sentence, I can't think of very many serious things.

I was doing my laundry when I sprained my ankle.

It was only one in a series of awkward moments in her life.

As soon as I opened my mouth, I knew I'd say the wrong thing, but I kept talking.

When my roommate told me he still drunk-dialed his ex, I grabbed his phone and deleted her number.

We narrowly escaped being struck by the plow, and I realized how close I came to having my last words be, "Asshat."

It was with great relief that I realized that both of my brothers would be married to girls I liked and could view as sisters.

....

Do you like how I snuck an announcement in that last one?

The girls downstairs came home from the bar last night at 3am and decided to have an impromptu - and loud - dance party.

It speaks highly of our inherent goodness that these girls are still alive this morning.

Rather, it speaks highly of Pineapple's goodness, as she is the one who went downstairs and told them that it's 3 in the goddamn morning and two of us had to be up for work in three hours, so would they turn it the hell down?

I would have just gone in swinging, maybe set their living room on fire.  Waking me at 3am is like waking a hibernating bear.  Hard to do, but when you manage it, you'll wish you hadn't.  Pineapple is much more reasonable in the face of extreme obtuseness.

me:
i'll take a swig from my hip flask

A few weeks ago, K-Jo and I were sitting with our laptops and talking.  She'd started a McSweeney's style list titled "Lesser-Known Slogans of Political moderates" and had thought of two or three, but she was stuck on more and asked me if I had any ideas.  We tossed ideas back and forth and had fun coming up with a few, but after she left I sort of forgot about it.  Thing is, that's what my friends and I do all the time, make crap up and occasionally write it down to laugh over it later.  So, it slipped from my mind.

That is, until K-Jo submitted it to McSweeney's with our names on it, and liked it so much that they published it.

How cool is that?  And it's rather sophisticated of me.  My humor runs normally along baser lines.  For example, a little while ago Pineapple was talking about how a guy she was dating had to express every single emotion he had, and I said, "Like, 'Hungry.  Angry.  BO-NER!" 

Long story short #1: My computer is slightly kaput, and the people who were to fix it didn't do a complete job, so I'm going to have my big brother talk me through un-kaputing it.  So I have to borrow Pineapple's computer from time to time.

Long story short #2: I'm working two jobs, and I'm tired, and I don't know when I'll get my Christmas shopping finished, if ever.

Long story short #3: 120 7th and 8th Graders, field trip to the Science Museum.  I need a stiff drink.  Also, one student noticed that I bump into things and trip "all the time," i.e. twice in her presence. 

So that's about it.  When I'm not busy, I'm half-asleep or completely asleep.  And as I have the night off tonight, I plan on being lazy.

On Feministe, there is a thread pondering names for your significant others.  There was this one time I was with friends back in IL and we were throwing around various names for significant others along the lines of "The ol' ball and chain."  There was the usual slightly insulting ones, like the ol' battle ax, but when I came up with "The ol' cement shoes," everyone at the table concluded that I'm afraid of commitment. 

Well, yeah, probably.  None the less, if I ever do get married, I'm going to call my husband the ol' cement shoes, and he'll have to live with it.

When someone you love announces that there is some real, big shit going on in their life, first you comfort them.  And listen to them.  You stop to reflect: I have two decent jobs and a more-than-vague vision of the future (one that shifts a bit this way and that, but whose doesn't?), family, friends, and I live in a city I love.  Who cares if the plow blocked me in once this morning and once this afternoon? Shoveling heavy, wet snow at 7am and again at 4pm is not the worst thing that could happen to anyone on any given day.  It's the big damn shit of life, the real shit, the make-you-realize-you're-a-grownup shit that ruins a day.  And when it happens to someone you love, all you can do and all you should do is hug them and say,  "Shit."  And they love you, so they know you mean, "I'm here."

Well!  I knew that teaching medical terminology for three years, reading L.M. Montgomery books, and listening to the Decemberists would get me to do some good in the world!

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