Tiny Quiz

Can you guess what makes me love this song more than it probably deserves?

Here's a hint: chord progression.

Crash Test Dummies, Two Knights and Maidens

Ok, So That Last Was Pretty Much Claptrap? and Now I'm Spouting Some Crap So It'll Go Off The Page Right Quick.

Tuna casserole should be its own food group.

It's nutritionally complete. Starch, via egg noodles. Vegetables come from the mushrooms in the soup and the peas you stir in. The tuna is protein, and I think there's milk in cream soups, right, so that's dairy. All the nutrients a growing person needs are immediately available. These nutrients may not be in quite the right proportions, but that's not tuna casserole's fault.

But it's only good if it's made properly, so the egg noodles go all crunchy on top. Soggy tuna casseroles should be thrown into tiny black holes and imploded.

Also: turkey bulgur stuff. Discuss!

And

I walk up the steps to Epworth every day. There are five of them - I've memorized the coffee stains, the leaf bits, the places where the paint is flaking off the railing. Five slabs of granite, then five feet till home.

It was a couple weeks into October when I first saw the tiny slip of paper wedged into the seam between the second and third steps. The size of my pinky nail, on slick white magazine stock, all it said was

and

I smiled the first time I saw it, wondering how I could work it into a metaphor. A canned blog post, I thought. Perfect.

The weeks passed; I couldn't find anything to do with that

and

Neither rain nor wind could touch it - stuck between the steps, under the porch awning, it was protected. I saw it several times a day, and it became the litmus test for my day. It was a cheerful and; a mocking and; an expectant and; an impatient and. Slowly, it began to tease me.

You've turned in your application, and?
You've got a recommendation letter, and?
You've got three papers to write this week, and?
Your boss wants to fire you, and?

You are imperfect

and

your life is incomplete

and

your best efforts are not good enough

and

you are alone now

***

Jeannie came to visit this weekend. Standing behind the counter at work, I heard someone say "hey" and all of a sudden I was trying to hug her around the display case and then we both ran to the door and we were laughing at ourselves and I was thinking how silly, how biologically improbable it is for one second with one person to encompass everything, the whole range of emotion and anticipation that's built over months and months of nothing.

Chameleons can point their eyes in two different directions at once. I try to imagine how they process what they see, and for a heartbeat Saturday night I felt it - one eye knew for sure that nothing had changed, ever, that neither of us had left and the past semester was compressed into a day, a second, a vacation from which we had both just returned. The other eye saw nine months past and 36 hours to come and then who knows, a month or a semester or a year or who knows, who can say, nothing's permanent, new history now on both sides, different people, familiar but changed.

I stepped around the counter and the two visions snapped, clicked into one: everything is different and everything's the same. Love is love; love endures.

***

We came back from the basketball game sweaty and dehydrated, put bids on shower order. I went first, hurried through the hot water, tried to be the gracious host. Jeannie and Brian and Sarah lounged in the living room. Jeannie called to me as I stepped out into the hall with a towel on my head.

"Brian wrote some magnetic poems on your fridge, you should come look."

"Good," I called back. "Glad somebody's using it." My hair was wet, and I bent down to rub it dry.

***

They left this morning. I woke up to say goodbye with hugs all around, then stumbled back to bed. When my alarm went off twenty minutes later, I leapt up - the room smelled like them and I was confused. I plodded into the bathroom. A small black speck lay embedded in the bathmat. I knelt down to pick it up. It was a magnet. The reverse bore a single word:

and

Last night I watched JJ Redick break Duke's all-time scoring record, previously held by Johnny Dawkins.

Point #1: We had the best seats I have ever had in Cameron, I think.
Point #2: I cried. (shut up.)
Point #3: My voice output will be dramatically reduced for at least the next 24 hours.
Point #4: My legs are really sore. From the bouncing. The incessant bouncing.
Point #5: If JJ doesn't get PoY now I will bust some caps in some people's butts.

I Should Not Be Allowed to Operate Heavy Machinery

I walk into the laundry room to get a Coke out the vending machine. There is a strange smell.

"Hmm, what is that smell?" I wonder.

"It smells like burning latex, almost."

"What could possibly be in the laundry room that smells like burning laOHOGOD."

I sprint over to the furthest dryer and pull it open. My bathmat is lying limp at the bottom of the drum, its latex no-skid pads seared brown.

I am going to get myself killed one of these days.

Idle Question

Dick Cheney describes the moment in which his friend hit the ground riddled by buckshot from his gun as "one of the worst days in his life".

This begs the question: if that's only one of the worst days, what's his worst day? What's worse than shooting a dude? in the FACE? What beats that?

Suggestions welcome.

As a part of the mind-bendingly stupid webpage design class I am taking, we have to design a webpage (HOLY CRAP, NO WAY). I have decided to use my page to taste-test and review chocolate. So if you have any chocolate suggestions, pass em on over (relatively cheap, please).

When Will I Ever Be Interesting Again?

Today was a day of ritual coffeeshop drudgery. It's a lunch shift, but not so bad. I handle it well, though I had a penny-tucker today and I had to clench my fist under the counter to keep from slapping her.

I was slogging away when a blonde woman walked up to the counter and asked for a tea. She handed me a red travel mug to fill with water - a nice mug, shiny, with that special outer layer of plastic that holds in the heat and a white logo that said - wait, what?

A white logo that said TASTE, with the familiar coil of steam rising from the cup.

I held the mug in my hand for a minute, mulling over what to say to her. I decided to be safe.

"So, Taste...that's gotta be a chain, huh?" I giggled. Stupidly. So I would look stupid.

"No, actually, it's this cafe in this tiny town in New York called East A"

"NO WAY, I LIVE THERE." The look in her eyes indicated that I had scared the crap out of her.

"Oh...really? Actually, my in-laws own the cafe."

"Haha that's so cool! Yeah everyone goes there I mean we used to go to the other place called Exquisite Taste but it was a smaller venue, you know, so it was always crowded but their pastries are really good and it's kind of the place everyone goes when we get back from school to talk and hang out and they have these great couches and...stuff." I think this is where I ran out of breath.

"Uhh, yeah, that's...great." She backed away from the counter nervously, dunking her teabag to make it look like she had an excuse to leave.

"So yeah haha I mean have you ever been there? It's really cute and they have a cow? in the rafters? I mean not really. It's a blowup cow. And it's smaller than a regular cow." I was leaning over the counter to compensate for her backing away.

"No, I haven't. They never want to go when I come visit. Listen, I got a...thing. Ok bye." She ran away.

And that is how I scared the crap out of some poor lady today.

w00t

We are doing the Allegri Miserere in choir again this semester. I love that song so muchly. The soprano soloist's part goes up to that high C and oooooohhhhhh. (It's not so good in this version because you can hear her reaching, but when Kristen sings it it's like she was born to it)

It's like the soprano Air in Messiah - I think it was I know that my redeemer liveth - when the music only called for the soloist to go up to the E, but instead she floated up to the B, and it was like watching a blue butterfly land on a leafless branch and spread his wings before fluttering away again.

Hit Stats

As of this moment, this blog has had 13,257 unique views.

10,000 of these have been from people image searching for 3D DDR.

IT DOESN'T EXIST, YOU TOOLS. STOP BOTHERING ME.

(There's also the person from Saudi looking for porn who stumbled on over today, but that's not important right now.)

The Internet Is A Frightening Place, My Friends

Steps in this realization:

1. In the process of creating my own webpage using HTML - not your stupid fancy Dreamweaver or that CSS crap, you loser - I checked my Gmail account to make sure it was still working.

2. After flopping into the inbox of the account on which I have received all of my official TFA and Corps correspondence, I noticed it has a ticker up top

3. which is apparently READING MY EMAIL, because there was a link entitled "Alternative to Peace Corps", which led to this site. Not even their general site. Nope. The one that referred specifically to the Corps.

4. So it was there that I found out what the Corps acceptance rate is! It is 50%! Holy CRAP, you people, it took me SIX MONTHS AND A SPY IN MY INBOX TO DISCOVER THIS.

Ok it is my bedtime.

Memed.

Oh god they're like a disease! Won't someone please inoculate me?

Four Jobs I've had:

1. Cashier (aka. angry customers' whipping boy)
2. Customer Service Desk Person (aka. not so bad because they take all the yelling out on the cashier)
3. Student Manager/Barista (aka. GOD MAKE IT STOP, THERE WAS POOP COMING OUT OF THE FLOOR BEHIND THE COUNTER LAST NIGHT)
4. RA (aka. police)

Four movies I can watch over and over:

1. Princess Mononoke
2. actually my attention span is too short
3.
4.

Four places I've lived:

1. Buffalo
2. East Aurora
3. Elma
4. Durham (gack)

Four TV shows I love:

1. Firefly
2. Homicide: Life on the Streets
3. Battlestar Galactica
4. Family Guy

Four places I've vacationed:

1. California
2. Acapulco
3. Lisbon
4. awesome ridiculous and still-missed epic Swiss roadtrip

Four of my favorite dishes:

1. My little plates with the blue flowers on them
2. Haha!
3. I am so witty.
4. Really, FAGE yogurt with honey. It tastes like sour cream!

Four sites I visit daily:

1. my web mail, because I hate Outlook
2. It's not stalking if I'm family!
3. Feministe. That is stalking.
4. Qwantz

Four places I would rather be right now:

1. standing on a stage in a funny hat with people clapping for me
2.
3.
4. (nothing really matters besides that)