Interview With an Auditor

Many thanks to Meg for turning me on to this awesome meme (question: is "meme" pronounced "me-me" or "memm"?)-- I feel honored to be interviewed by such a luminary!

And in turn, I'd like to interview you! To participate:

1. Leave me a comment saying, "Interview me." (PLEASE NOTE: If I don't have your e-mail address, I probably won't be able to interview you. And unlike Meg, who is brave, I am too wimpy to put my e-mail address on my blog, because a lot more people hate me than you would think, given my pleasant and sunny nature. So if I don't have an e-mail address for you, or you can't get mine from a friend or trusted neighbor, then I might have to exclude you. My apologies!)

2. I will respond by emailing you five questions of my choice.

3. Then, you should update your blog with the answers to the questions.

4. You have to include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post.

5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you get to ask them five questions.

And now-- Incredible Megs Interviews Kim Shable: Two Units of Awesome UNITE!

Quick! The house is on fire! Excepting the obvious people and pets, what 5 things do you take?

I would take the following items:

• My photo albums (which hopefully count as one item)
• The big grocery bag of mementos that I've been hoping to scrapbook one day, in case I ever become crafty enough to scrapbook
• My computer
• Willie, my stuffed bear
• My CD book (or, if I had to choose only one CD, I would take Fashion Nugget by Cake)

What is the best or weirdest reconnection you have made via the internet?

My childhood friend Wendy found me through the (now sadly defunct) journazine Convincing John-- we hadn't talked in like ten years, so it was fantastic to catch up with her and get back into each other's lives! I have to say, though, too, that I'm still really interested in whoever left the comment on my trombone post-- still no leads there...

What is your most hated word?

That's hard, so I'll break it down into categories. My least favorite swear word is the C-word (which I can't even usually bring myself to write out fully, but, paradoxically, which I yelled at a player on the Washington Wizards while he was trying to shoot a free throw last Wednesday). Least favorite business phrase: "Going forward," as in "Going forward, we will no longer be using the microwave for tasty popped-corn treats." And probably my least favorite overall word is "moist."

Tell me something funny that you've never blogged before.

I once knew a guy who told me he would turn gay if Ricky Martin asked him to.

Is there a part of wedding planning that you totally didn't expect or are particularly baffled by?

I'm just surprised by the sheer amount of things that need to be done. Favors for the wedding and the shower. Music for the ceremony and the reception. Readings that need to be selected! (By the way, anyone have any suggestions for non-Biblical love-related readings that we could do? Because if not, I'm going to have someone recite, with deadly seriousness, the words to "The Rose," by Bette Midler.) I simply cannot believe that all of these tiny decisions are going to add up to one big awesome kick-ass wedding. Chances are, I will freak out before I finish, and the whole wedding will be janky. To use an analogy, my wedding will be to normal weddings as The Tonight Show is to local cable access' "Chattin' With Chaz."

All right, having honed my interview answering skills, I am now ready to practice asking. So fire away!

The ups and downs of Wednesday

Down: A water main exploded in front of our house yesterday morning:

Note! In this next picture, you can see our garbage cans! And also, the box for the fan we bought the other day to fight the stifling heat in our attic bedroom:

See them there, right on the left edge of the picture? Our garbage is famous! Fortunately, the water was turned back on by the evening, so except for some occasional but very scary air bubbles that cause the water to shoot out in all directions at a very high power, everything is better. As for the street crater, it has been filled with dirt, which immediately became mud, as the entire road was flooded. Thus, I am a very muddy person. BUT! I can easily shower, so it's all good.

Up: Later that same evening, I got to go to the Cavs playoff game with my mom! Other than the fact that we were seated next to an extremely drunk woman, and a Dude Who Would Not Cheer, No Matter What, we had an awesome time.

As you can see from my hat, I am a Witness. Rise up!

Even better-- I won the chance to buy tickets to game C (for those of you not from Cleveland, I'll explain-- tickets to the Cavs are so in demand that you have to enter a lottery just to be allowed to BUY them), so I might be going again-- there's a chance I might have to miss it for Amy's birthday (GO AMY!), but if not, I will totally be there again, representing in my Witness hat and Lebron jersey.

I bet you never thought I'd be a jersey owner. But I showed you-- I showed you all!

You will bow to my Newberry Award Winning novel of awesome

I've been in a bit of a reading phase lately, although sadly, our library book sale isn't until next weekend (Pen, Megs, you lucky dogs). Although I'm currently wrapped up in Lolita-- one of my favorite books, although it always seems kind of pervy to admit, doesn't it?-- I just came out of a Young Adult binge (which seems even pornier when you throw in the Lolita situation), mostly focused around The Westing Game.

For those of you who have never read The Westing Game, I feel great pity and regret for your deprived and squandered lives. While you were out staying fit and basking in the sun, I was hunkered down on the living room couch, reading and rereading The Westing Game, a YA novel with a plot so intricate that I still have trouble fully comprehending it to this day.

This reading was preceded by The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death, and followed by From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, both of which involve probably my favorite YA theme-- young people run away from home and wind up involved with crazies.

All this YA reading has gotten me revved up to write my own YA book, an idea I've been toying with ever since my mentor Joe Mackall kindly informed me that what I thought of as my Very Important Novel With Deep, Deep Meaning would really be a hit with the tween crowd. (I really do think he meant this as a compliment, but as I was expecting to win the National Book Award with it, and not the Newberry, I was a bit bummed.)

I'm not quite sure what my book will be about yet, but I think it will involve the following:

• Doing It


• Unexpected teen pregnancy (not on the part of the narrator, because that is SO DONE)


• Men fistfighting (because fistfighting is hot hot hot)


• Probably some sort of complex series of clues leading to the identity of a killer/the father of the baby/a vast Papal conspiracy

It will probably also be set around the turn of the century, like another of my favorites, The Callender Papers. This, I realize, might hamper my Doing It/unexpected teen pregnancy angle, but could really benefit the Men Fistfighting angle, as men seemed to do that a lot back then.

It's my sports team, and I'll cry if I want to.

I totally just wept openly as the Cavs won their first playoff game. And it's not even like it was close, they won by like 17 points.

Does anyone else have this problem? Or am I the only one? Because I mean, I don't just cry about the Cavs. I cry at every single sports-related movie. Once, I cried while watching I Love the Eighties, because they showed footage of that one Olympic hockey game. I don't even know what the significance of that game is, or even care remotely about hockey, but I totally cried about it, like a lot.

In fact, I would wager that apart from animal movies, sports movies make me cry the most. And I was never even on a sports team, unless you count the Aurora High School Marching Band or the Quiz Bowl team, which I am sure you do not.

I really need to get this Sports Crying under control, before I head to the Q for game two on Wednesday. With my mom. Which is hot.

What's going on

Okay, so I know I haven't been the best blogger lately (although traffic on my site is way up, which I find both exciting and sort of creepy), but since it's Sunday, and I'm home alone and sitting on top of the washing machine, as is my custom, I thought I'd redeem myself with a short recount of my latest activities (or non-activities, as the case may be).

1. Remember a few weeks ago, when I was called for jury duty? And how I was totally panicked about having to drive downtown, and made Ben do like three trial runs with me to the courthouse, and became convinced that I was going to be gunned down by a rogue defendant, like I saw in this one episode of "American Justice"? And wept openly over it at work, because I was so freaked out that I would get called for some sort of OJ case, and be sequestered for months and months, and then everyone would expect me to write a book about it, only I was afraid the book would be totally boring and no one would buy it?

Anyway, if you can forget all that, I would appreciate it, because I never got summoned. I called the jury hotline today, and was thanked by a recording for completing my jury service. And I have to admit, I was totally bummed. Mainly because I had worked myself into such a retarded frenzy over it for no apparent reason, but then also because that meant that I myself would never actually get to appear on "American Justice," which (when not documenting cases of gunned down jurors) often features them as key performers.

2. On Friday, our dog pooped herself. This was not acceptable, as all of our furniture and carpets are white or beige. (Not that it would have been acceptable had the furniture all been brown, but I admit, it might have eased my worry a little.) Nine pre-wetted paper towels and a day-long confinement to the basement later, Che is now socially acceptable again, only now she has pronounced dingleberries, which makes me wonder if the people in the neighborhood think I'm a bad dog mom when we're out on walks.

3. Fed up with my horribly librarianish wardrobe, I went on a shopping spree and am now very fashionably dressed (except right now, with my unshaven legs and "What Up, Dog?" t-shirt, but I feel that I can afford to be poorly dressed in my own basement). My favorite purchase-- a pair of footless lime green tights, which I don't actually think I'll ever be able to bring myself to wear in public, but which are really fun to run around the house in.

4. Ben and I met with the florist and picked out our wedding flowers, which are totally awesome (my bouquet will have wheat in it!). I never thought I would be the kind of person who would care at all about flowers of any kind (other than a heartfelt hatred of carnations, especially in unnatural colors), but apparently, I do. Next weekend, we're meeting with our minister for our first marital counseling session, which will most likely reveal that I am tired of walking the dog all the time, Ben is tired of doing the dishes, and neither of us really wanted to go to premarital counseling in the first place.

So as you can see, I have been very, very busy

• worrying needlessly about things that didn't happen
• chasing the dog with scissors to remove the offending dingleberry
• running around in footless tights
• being wedding-y

I hope you will forgive my lapse of blog activity, and I do hereby solemnly swear to be a better blogger. Keep in mind that I could have posted dinglebery pictures, but I didn't, because I have that kind of restraint.

Today at the post office, I saw a guy that I was almost positive that I went to high school with.

This is always highly exciting to me, because I never see people out in public that I know. Other people that I know are always running into each other in the biggest, most crowded places-- Jacobs Field, The Q, effing Christina Aquilera concerts. But in the two years that I have lived in Euclid, I have never seen my neighbors outside of the confines of our street, ever. This one time? Ben and I saw our neighbor's truck at the grocery store, and I almost made him go back in with me so I could force a surprise meeting with him.

So I was understandably excited to see this possible Aurora High School class of 1997 graduate. Never mind that I don't think we had ever actually spoken to each other, or really knew of each other's existence except that our names were relatively close (but not even really that close) in alphabetical order.

Anyway, I pointed him out to Marita, who immediately began trying to get me to go over and say hi. But I couldn't, because

a) It probably wasn't him, although it did look exactly like him; why would he be at the Seven Hills post office at one thirty on a Monday?

b) Even if it was him, what was I supposed to do, go over and be like, "Hey, Todd, I don't know if you remember me, but I think we went to high school together. Don't worry, you don't even have to pretend to be interested in my boring life since graduation-- I just wanted a quick confirmation that you are who I thought you were, so that I can remember this as 'That one time I ran into Todd in the post office.'"

So I never did go over. If it was really you, Todd, I'm sorry I ignored you. But if it wasn't Todd, then there is a total Guy Who Looks Just Like Todd with a lot of shit to mail in the Seven Hills area.

Dear Barenaked Ladies,

How could you do this to me?

Do you know how embarrassing it is already to be the world's biggest Barenaked Ladies fan? No one takes you seriously! Even after I explain that your genius lies not in "One Week" and "Pinch Me," but in your other varied, beautiful, soul-searching tracks. No-- once I explain that I am a Barenaked Ladies fan, people's image of me drops from Well Educated Literati to Girl Who Probably Watches "Pants Off Dance-Off" While Making a Scrapbook of Her Cat.

But I always stood by you. Even after you released Everything to Everyone, which, let's face it, wasn't really that great. Except for "Upside Down." And the song about the monkeys.

But now you come at me with not one but two CDs O'Crap, Barenaked Ladies Are Me and Barenaked Ladies Are Men. Which I had such high hopes for! Because maybe? They would be a return to form? And I would find another song like "Enid" or "Break Your Heart".

I did not find anything remotely like that.

Oh, that one song, "Bank Job," that was good. I liked that. Because there were nuns in it. And catchy!

But then I go get BNL Are Men, and find that not one but two of the songs on it are the exact same song as "Bank Job," only with different lyrics! (For anyone else out there who's been burned by these CDs, which I think at this point is just Kelly, I'll point them out for you-- "Fun and Games," and "Quality.") Also eeriely familiar-- "What a Letdown" ("Never Is Enough") and "Beautiful" ("Conventioneers").

Point is, I sense that you've given up. Your new music is hookless and unmemorable, and the drawings on the covers of both Me and Men are creepy and upsetting.

And so, it is with great sorrow that I announce that I am renouncing you as My Favorite Band Other Than the Beatles. Of course, your entire catalogue, up until Maroon (and some portions of Everything To Everyone) will still be celebrated in my home. But I deny the existence of these two CDs entirely, and a good third of Everything.

In your place, I name Cake my new FBOTtB. As such, I will be forced to rearrange my CD book so that their CDs come before yours; in a fit of rage, I may also place you behind Elvis Costello and possibly even The Presidents of the United States of America, which I know is a severe blow, but desperate times call for desperate measures.

Okay, I won't do that, just because the only thing lamer than a BNL fan is a POTUSA fan. I obviously know how to pick them.

To the rest of the world, I urge you to listen to BNL as they once were, and discover their glory anew. But to you, BNL, I can only express my disappointment and sadness.

Thanks for everything up to, well, Everything.

All best,

Kim Shable

PS: Some awesome new music? Lily Allen (especially "LDN," which I can listen to on incessant repeat), Mika, and Avril Lavigne's new song, "Girlfriend," which I understand is geared toward thirteen-year-old girls, but which I cannot stop rocking out to.

Kim's Obsessions Du Jour

Thanks, Pen, for the tag-- does it count in the total if I admit that I'm obsessed with being tagged for things? It makes me feel like I got picked in gym!

1. My sudden realization that Hugh Jackman would be perfect as the lead role in the horrible novel I've been writing since I was thirteen. This is a position that has been held, over the course of the last fourteen years, by Mark Harmon, George Clooney, Colin Firth, and, most recently, that big Scottish guy from 300. Of course, it would have to be big Wolverine Hugh Jackman, and not skinny, sort of creepy The Boy From Oz Hugh Jackman.

2. Procuring a new wardrobe, as I have come to the vastly horrifying conclusion that every piece of clothing I own is horrible, and not in a trendy way, but more in a middle-aged blood bank volunteer way. I will approach this scientifically, procuring only those objects that I actually need (black pants that are flatteringly cut and do not pick up lint) and avoid those that I do not (Cherokee cardigans from Target).

3. Riding my new bike, which is currently chained to a lawn tractor in our garage, but which I went to visit a few minutes ago, trudging through the three inches of snow on my driveway, just to reminisce.

4. My wedding dress, which just arrived in town yesterday. Sadly, I have to wait two more months to try it on, which is both good (two more months to get my monsterous double stomach under control, so that it does not explode out of my dress like a muffin escaping a pressurized Pillsbury tube) and bad (two more months of slowly morphing its super-cuteness to hideous Seinfeld Puffy Shirt-esqueness in my mind).

5. The identity of the person who left this comment on my trombone blog:

I also play trombone...I also know kim shable and kim shable knows me

Was it you? (I don't like to name names with all the evil Internet predators out there, so I'm hoping you'll recognize this artfully cropped portrait of the person whom I believe it to be, at least for now.) If not, I'm at a loss... weirdly, I really do know a lot of people who play trombone, so it could be almost anyone...

Yesterday and Today

Yesterday:

• Temperature: 75 degrees
• Sky: blue
• Sun: out
• Precipitation: none
• Dog-walking outfit: cute pink tank and brown gauchos
• Minutes on bike: 35
• Opinion of Ohio: Swell!

Today:

• Temperature: 31 degrees
• Sky: gray
• Sun: mysteriously imploded; dawn of second ice age?
• Precipitation: that annoying snow that comes in pellets that get stuck in hair and don't melt for a really long time, but when they do, they sink onto your scalp and run down your back in a totally grody fashion
• Dog-walking outfit: big brown coat over long-sleeved shirt and gray yoga pants, with white tennis shoes (hot hot hot)
• Minutes on bike: none
• Opinion of Ohio: Why do you taunt me, why, you wretched state of death!

Things I find vexing

• I just bought this bike:

And tomorrow the temperature is supposed to go back down into the thirties.

• I am, as I type this, compiling a mix CD that I do not feel has a solid anchor song. It does, however, feature both "Don't Cry For Me, Argentina" and the Presidents of the United States' of America's "Puffy Little Shoes," so I am hoping its eclectic nature will save it.
  
• I still have no music for my wedding ceremony...

... and this guy is an actual option available to me. This isn't just a picture of a bagpiper. This is an actual Cleveland bagpiper that I could get to play at my wedding. For $3,000. I am seriously considering this.

• Not really.