Santa's little helper

Despite the 60 degree weather and the the decidedly un-Christmassy feelings it inspires, I have begun, in earnest, the purchase of this year's Christmas booty. And this year, I'm doing it with a budget, which is serving no purpose whatsoever other than

a) to give me a reason to write in my new "I Heart AU" notebook and

b) to drive me absolutely insane.

But my Real Simple magazine said that using a budget was the best way to shop for Christmas without going broke, so I'm going for it. This is in stark contrast to last year, in which the theme was Buy Everything, No Matter How Much People Will Scorn Its Lameness, So That a Large Portion of the Presents Under the Tree Are From You, Even If They Suck. This was both expensive and unfulfilling, mainly because the vast majority of Christmas 2005 presents with "Kim" on the "from" line are now defunct, if ever opened at all.

That strategy itself was a large revolt against my previous previous shopping plan, which was Be Cheap and Blame It On Being Poor. Which I actually was poor, but, coming from a family with very generous relatives, I felt downright chintzy. So now that I have a real job (sorry, Day Spa!), I feel it is my duty to buy the very best. Or at least, to buy something that isn't from the Mikasa outlet at the Aurora Farms. (Or, I shudder to mention, from The Paper Factory, where the majority of Christmas 2002 was born.)

So far, the budget is going well, even if it is frustrating (I have a ledger AND charts explaining who got what gift and how much it cost). In another very un-Kimmish move, I have completed at least half my shopping in just the last two days, using nothing but the Internet (and, in future days, the friendly nature of my office's front desk receptionist, who will be thoughtfully receiving my packages for me, as I fear that whoever broke into my house this summer will be lurking around to swipe whatever the hapless delivery guy may leave on my porch). I'm kind of bummed that it's looking like I'm going to miss out on the Mall Experience, but at the same time, how can you not like something that involves Super Saver Shipping?

Not much

This is not the first time I have had nothing of import to say on my blog, but it will probably be the least interesting.

This is mainly because many, many hilarious things are happening in my life right now, and I am not at liberty to discuss any of them, because they could get me fired, or beat up, or put on Santa's naughty list, or all three. So I am forced to keep them to myself, giggling in a high-pitched way at their sadly secret hilarity.

However, this will not stop me from blogging, because I totally dread being placed on the "You Should Blog More" list over at Pen and M's. So here, in no particular order, are some random numbered pieces of information:

1. I am still insanely obsessed with Clapton's "Bellbottom Blues," mentioned earlier; this has only gotten worse since, just this evening, I got a copy of The Cream of Clapton from the library and have been listening to it pretty much non-stop. Turns out the whole CD is good, which shames me, because I have always been a vocal anti-Clapton rabble-rouser.

2. You should read Philip Roth's The Plot Against America. If you do so, please note that it does get more interesting, although you might not believe me when you're in the interminable section about his attempt to run away to the orphanage.

3. Click is the single most misleading movie ever made. Do not watch this movie. It will make you cry your face off, and that is no joke. I sat around the house with no face for about forty-five minutes. It was ugly.

4. I feel that the number of comments on my blog is down, and that makes me sad. I am sad now. Do you know what will make me feel better? If you post a comment. No pressure.

5. Please visit this man's blog. If you like things that are funny, or if you like Marmaduke (which, please note, does not fall into the catagory of "Things That Are Funny"), you will like this blog.

6. Finally, because I feel a blog post without a picture is terrifying and naked, I include for you this picture, which comes up in Google image search when you type "Click Marmaduke:"

Welcome Back, Tullis!

I will be back shortly with stories of my heroic near-victory against Ben's niece Kaylyn at Mastermind (which I am extremely retarded at) over Thanksgiving, but first, it is my honor and pleasure to mark the return of Matt Tullis' Sick Cookie to the blogosphere, after an extended absence. This is proof that hounding someone incessantly for months and months and months is an excellent way to get what you want.

So check him out, yo! You know you want to...

Weirdnesses Six - Eleven

Curse you, Variant E! You have tagged me to reveal six weirdnesses about myself, and I already used up my best five when Diane had me do this last year. But worry not, as I am sure I can come up with six more:

1. When I was in high school, I would cut pictures of handsome men out of magazines and lamanate them with special laminating paper. Proof of this can be seen here; my collection also had a lot of Kevin Kline (yes, I found him sexy and no, I don't know why) and Gregory Peck. I hung them all on the wall across from my bed, which was dubbed The Wall of Men. When my parents moved out of the house earlier this year, they attempted to give me the remainder of the wall of men, which I refused, although now I wish I hadn't.

2. I pretend like I'm in a movie pretty much all the time, and everyone who interacts with me is in the movie, too. This is most obvious when I drive, because in the movie, this is when I reveal important facts about my life to the viewing audience, with a mellow Jack Johnson song playing in the background.

3. Sometimes I just really like singing the Ashland University fight song; I believe it to be just a really great song.

4. I refuse to watch movies about animals that get separated from their families because they make me cry like nothing else. I caught the last ten minutes of Homeward Bound a few months ago and cried for like an hour. The same is true of Snoopy Come Home.

5. When I'm out walking the dog and listening to my MP3 player, sometimes I march in time with the music. I think some of the people in my neighborhood have noticed. This works really well with Ashlee Simpson's "I Didn't Steal Your Boyfriend," which is about as fast as my normal walking speed.

6. I really don't like Halloween, because I can never come up with a good costume, and because I am a creative person, people always think I'm going to have a really good one. But I can't come up with any. At all.

Okay, now for the tagging: I would love to see responses from Pen, Ashley, Meg, Frisby, Denise and Tom, and would super love to perhaps see some responses from the gang at Turkey Hat Sweet, even though I secretly believe I am too nerdy for them. I know the rules are that I am supposed to go their blogs and personally tag them, but I'm in the middle of making a troublesome batch of not-so-flavorful Chex Mix, and must decide what the next course of action should be (reseason? With the risk of overbaking?). So I trust you all to do your civic duty and play along!

Happy Thanksgiving, blogosphere!

Phone Calls From the Doc

Dear Varied Medical Personnel With Whom I Am Currently Affiliated,

I thought perhaps you might need a reminder of when is and is not a good time to call me with information that might directly impact my health.

For instance:

Do call when the results of my CT scan come back abnormal. This is information that would be most helpful in Preventing My Possible Death. Do not make me call you for this information.

Conversely, do not call me with the same information a few days later because no one marked it on my chart. All you are doing at that point is ruining a perfectly good trip to Walgreen's.

Do not call me forty-five minutes before a scheduled doctor's appointment to tell me exactly what the doctor is going to say to me in said appointment. This serves only to make me late for the very appointment that I will already know the entire content of.

Also, when I leave three messages with your answering service, do call me back to let me know that the fax from the urologist that I am so desperately checking on has, in fact, arrived; without this fax, there is no point in me coming to the appointment that I already know the entire content of.

And while this actually has no relation to the telephone aspect of doctor-patient communication, do not make me look retarded by checking on the whereabouts of said fax, the fax that was supposed to say that my uterus was probably going to fall out, when it turns out that, when interpreted by a proper doctor, there is absolutely nothing wrong with my uterus at all, rendering the entire appointment I already know the entire content of totally irrelevant.

I really am sorry that all I can write about lately is the doctor, but this entire situation is starting to wear on me. More photographs have been taken of my insides this year than my outsides, and still, it hurts when I wee.

Thank you, Spammers, for the inspiration!

Special thanks to Kristy for letting me know that I had another column run in the Columbus Dispatch today-- Hotmail is down, so I sadly cannot send out my self-congratulatory e-mail as of yet. But luckily, Blogger is still here for me to indulge in my narcisistic needs!

You can check the story here-- it revolves around my deep-seated hatred of all things spam (although curiously skips the canned meat variety). I hope you enjoy-- please enjoy! Please?

Fade Away

Although I realize that this will reveal me to be nearly elderly in my music choices, I have to say that I heard the song "Bell Bottom Blues" by Eric Clapton on the radio yesterday, and I cannot get it out of my head, which means I must procure a copy within the next 48 hours or else succumb to madness. It is, at least in my mind, the greatest song ever written*, even though as of right now I only know like six words of it-- "I don't want to faaaaade awaaaay"-- but they're the best five words of the whole song, so I'm not too worried about that part.

If you have this song, please come to my house so we can play it over and over and over again, until we get tired of it or else vomit from sheer glee.

*Please note that my opinion of "the greatest song ever written" changes sometimes over the span of just a few hours-- for example, this afternoon, I believed "Oh Sherry" by Steve Perry was the greatest song ever written, but after coming home and listening to it a few times, I am totally over it.

What I Believe Now #2

No matter how bad things get, everything is better when you listen to a song with a na-na chorus.

Some good options:

"Hey Jude," The Beatles
"Centerfold," J. Geils Band
"Lovin', Touchin', Squeezin' ," Journey
"Land of 1,000 Dances," Wilson Pickett
"Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye," Steam

I am sure I am forgetting some; please feel free to add to my list. Then make a mix CD out of it. I guarantee you, you will be feeling good within minutes.

Canceled!

I had finally worked through my utter terror of going to the cystoscopy today, and was already planning the hilarious blog entry that would ensue, when I got a call at the last minute saying the doctor had been called into emergency surgery and would have to reschedule my appointment. Blast! So now I get to spend another unspecified amount of time wondering what horrors await me at the urologist's office...

I have to admit, though, I do feel bad for whatever guy had to have emergency urological surgery today.

A belated review of the Office, and of my failures in love (updated)

Warning! This post contains unfunny and borderline downer insights into my former non-existent love life, B.B. (before Ben). While "The Office" is definitely a funny show, this post is not. So do not be fooled by its tangential connection to "The Office!"

Having come to "The Office" very late, I had a lot of catching up to do-- with their non-stop coverage of all things "Office," Entertainment Weekly had already more than informed me that Jim and Pam would be kissing by the end of season two. But what I was not prepared for was the way in which it all went down.

Jim? Going up to Pam? And finally just saying his feelings out loud? And then later they kiss? This whole thing made me want to cry. Because I have done this exact thing before-- the "saying your feelings out loud" thing-- and it did not end with kissing. No, it did not.

Because on the three occasions that I actually worked up the nerve to try this, I got these three responses:

1. Slight revulsion, as if being propositioned by a homeless woman smeared with feces and BBQ sauce
2. Utter confusion, as if it could not be possible that I were even female, let alone someone you might make out with
3. Complete refusal to acknowledge the entire situation.

So to see it work for Jim-- and yes, I know they don't end up together, at least not yet, so it didn't really work-- really kind of blew my mind a little. I had kind of just assumed that, because I had failed at it three different times, it probably wasn't actually possible, but really only the kind of thing that your friends tell you you should really do when you're all drunk. But now that I see that it is possible (at least for fictional office drones) kind of bums me out.

Which, I know, is super stupid, because I have Ben, who is ten thousand times a better man than the three aforementioned guys. And with Ben, I didn't have to spend any time sitting in my room feverishly journaling out all the reasons that He Seems Like He Likes Me-- it was just, he likes me. There was no need to sit down and Have a Talk about it. It took me forever to figure out that if someone actually liked me, it would be a little more obvious.

Still, though, I felt a little twinge watching Jim and Pam. Maybe I was jealous that it worked, or maybe I was just embarrassed for Jim, and mad at Pam, or maybe I was mad at Utter Confusion guy. Or, I just remember how humiliating it was-- telling someone your feelings, and having those feelings rebuffed. It was like being broken up with, only without any of the benefits of ever actually having gone out. And I think that no matter how in love with Ben I am and will always be, and how I'll probably never have to go through that situation again, that whole concept will always sort of bother me.

The whole point is, sharing your feelings tends to lead less to kissing, and more to crying on the floor in your bedroom, singing "All By Myself" very loudly at three in the morning. One can only hope that this is not what Jim ended up doing.

Thanks, Mr. Raudins!

Marita and I totally just used algebra to solve a ratio equation. Who said we would never use that again? I mean, other than me.

Dancing With the Pundits

Ben is an election junkie, and, having decided that finding out if the democrats will seize control is more important than the Cavs game, I am now stuck watching the talking heads on CNN. Which is when I noticed something of great interest-- in the background, behind the Heads' heads, is a big screen with four smaller screens in it, and the one on the lower left is playing-- I shit you not-- Dancing With the Stars. I know this, because as we were flipping to a local channel to see how our issues were fairing (note: local channels DO NOT CARE AT ALL how the issues are fairing, it turns out) I saw Mario Lopez dancing with his shiny hoochie woman, and when we flipped back to CNN, I saw Mario Lopez again, this time with his arm around the shiny hoochie.

This is why America is the greatest country on earth.

High Five!

Nothing I can say about this movie would be funnier than the actual movie itself. You must just go see it. Please, see it. Please. Every time you think about going to see Borat, but don't, a baby dies somewhere. Think about that when you think about not seeing it.

Go see Borat. Now!

The Unwilling Adult/My Biz is Your Biz-- a retrospective

Happy Blogday to me-- it's the one year anniversary of My Business Is Your Business (the blog formerly known as The Unwilling Adult)! Not unlike Tom, I am secretly horrified at my first post, which should perhaps instead have been called "Look at me! I am still clinging desperately to the fact that I was once a literary writer!" So rather than rehash its pretentious musings here, I will instead give you a guided tour of The Year in Blog:

November: Bought motorcycle on eBay. This, by the way? Still not resolved.

December: Crunchy wishes you all a Merry Christmas. Will we hear from Crunchy again? Only time will tell!

January: I got a sweet ass big giant chair at work. Sadly, I no longer have this chair. Probably a homeless person is using it. I envy him.

February: I learned that there is no such thing as baby carrots. This still haunts me to this very day.

March: I wrote letters to anonymous work mates. I may have to consider this tack again: Dear Person Who Controls the Thermostat-- neither 63 nor 74 make good temperatures for the office. Just so you know. Love, Kim

April: My dental woes begin. Readers settle in for months and months and months and months of disgusting updates.

May: Absolutely nothing of interest happens this month. The blog is a fallow wasteland. I apologize. Although all my Seven Short Shorts in Seven Days are there-- I won't link them all, but they're a fun read! I think.

June: Robbery at the homestead! But luckily, a plucky neighbor saves the day.

July: You wanted more of the Hoff? You got it.

August: More issues with the neighborhood. But I know in my heart that Alex was not a part of this mess.

September: Behold, Zit of the Damned! This was over a month ago, and I still have remants of it. Awesome.

October: Perhaps you didn't catch this?

All in all, a great year for blogging! Here's to many more-- even if it means more motorcycles, more big giant zits, and more invasive medical procedures involving cameras. Viva La Business!

We're so fine, there's no telling where the money went

I realize this is a bit belated, but please enjoy this picture of several of my co-workers and I dressed as Robert Palmer girls:

Please note that I have a total inability to make sexy Robert Palmer girl faces.

Sadly, we did not even place in the company costume contest. But the votes were decided by applause level, and my department is lacking in the Temporary Suspension of Dignity area, and rightfully did not hoot itself hoarse.

However, I think you will all acknowledge our hotness. Special props to Marita for costume concept. And thanks to everyone involved for never acknowledging out loud that my sash was not actually red.