It is with great sadness that we say goodbye to my uncle, Tony Shable, who passed away yesterday afternoon. Uncle Tony, you will be missed by us all. We love you.

Confession

Every time I watch America's Next Top Model, I spend at least ten minutes afterward practicing poses in the mirror.

I'm really bad at it.

Japan, I thank you for George Takei and this.

This video is the best thing that's ever happened to me.

Remembrances of Things Past

I just thought I'd update you on Situation: Nothing-- the on-going travails of my suddenly totally uninteresting life. While I was once the kind of person who could constantly enthrall you with my tales of The Time the Nurse Told Me That I Should Be in an Internment Camp Because of my Ethnicity, or The Time I Shared a Cigarette With a Homeless Guy Who Was Carrying a Stolen Ladder, I am now the kind of person whose everyday routine is pretty much the same, and sans racist nurses and ladder-toting homeless guys.

This is vexing to me, because I have always prided myself as the kind of person to whom interesting things often happened. This may be because I am cosmically preordained to have such interactions, or simply because I am too naive to avoid situations in which I may be forced into contact with, say, a speed-popping neighbor that tricked me into driving him to an acquaintance's house in order to beat the crap out of him (I thought we were just going to cash his tax refund!).

But as of late, the only interesting character with whom I have come into contact is Mark, a nice-enough guy with a three-legged dog that often accompanies me on walks with Che. I really don't know anything about him except that he seems nice, and his dog has three legs. I like to think that he's really some kind of drug kingpin, and that Pitch, the three-legged dog, turns into a battle-armored warrior dog at night. But really, I imagine Mark and Pitch just spend their evenings watching reruns of Evening Shade.

I guess the sad truth is that as you get older, you're less likely to run into zany situations. A stolen ladder becomes a three-legged dog. A racially insensitive, chain-smoking nurse becomes a guy that's maybe just a bit too into said three-legged dog. And an inadvertent evening spent as an accessory to a petty crime becomes an evening spent with Burt Reynolds in the shade.

Hair Apparent

Triumph! After three months of what I considered to be the worst haircut ever (no matter what everyone else had to say-- it was a reverse effing mullet!), I finally rectified the situation with this stunner. Admittedly, I have no idea how it will look when I wear it curly, but this look alone has me rushing out for a straight iron tomorrow morning.

Check me, dude. I am so hot.

Pardon our dust

As you may have noticed, my blog is looking a bit different-- this is mostly due to the fact that I spent about three hours yesterday searching in vain for a less lame blog template, and ended up wiping out all my links. I was able to recreate most of them, but if I've forgotten your link, please contact me so I can readd it-- I swear that this is not a roundabout way of booting people from the blogroll, but rather just further proof of my internet-based ineptitude.

I am still planning an overhaul, but should probably attempt it when I have more than a Sunday afternoon to unveil it. So if anyone has any suggestions for that, I'm all ears.

Basically, Frisby, I'm looking to you for both of these things, since your blog link was obliterated and you know everything there is to know about the internet and all things awesome.

In the meantime, please enjoy the somewhat ominous picture of my eyes burning into your soul as you read each new post. Please note that new Swing State author (and super hilarious dude) Matt is featured in the background! I think he's a little tired of me using this picture for everything from MySpace to Twitter, so I like to give him a little shout-out.

The Hair That Would Not Dye

I just got done dying my hair the exact same color for the three hundredth time in a row. That is not to say that I picked a hair dye that was the same color as my natural hair-- in fact, I picked something called "Caramel Latte," which promised to give me shiny light brown hair with reddish undertones. Instead, my hair is a shade I like to call "No One Pay Attention to Me Brown"-- still medium brown, no reddish undertones, with the dull finish and wispy flyaways of a homeless street preacher.

This is the same color I got when I tried Dark Mocha, Camel (which was a men's hair dye, not that that has anything to do with why it didn't work, but it might explain why it is the only one not named after food), Butterscotch Dream, and Espresso.

In fact, the last hair dye I can remember that actually changed the color of my hair in a noticeable way (other than those effing AWESOME highlights that I got from Pen during the season finale of the first season of The Apprentice) is one called Copper Penny, which turned my hair a seasick version of Ronald McDonald Red, thus highlighting the weird green undertone of my skin, and making me look like a sitcom star on a television with a color imbalance.

Now obviously, I don't stray too far from my natural hair color, mostly due to the Copper Penny incident (although just to let you know how fashion backward I was in college? I actually dyed it that color three times). I would never go platinum blonde (a color that I don't think works for Claire on ANTM, by the way), or black (which I also did once, in high school-- apparently, brown is the only hair color that WILL mask the alien green undertone of my skin). But I figure, come on, there is a DIFFERENCE between dark brown and light brown, or even dark blond, which I have also tried. But my hair is apparently like network TV-- you get red, black or brown, not the delicate shades in between. In short, I wanted my hair to be VH1-- it came out CBS.

To write or not to write?

I went out with my friend Denise tonight, which is fantastic, because Denise is one of the few people with whom I can have truly melodramatic conversations without later feeling like a retard. The conversation in question: is it time for me to give up writing?

The reason I asked is this: I spend a lot of time at work looking around and thinking-- this was not supposed to happen. Don't get me wrong, I do actually love my job-- as much as one can love auditing, not an inherently lovable profession-- but it's not exactly what I spent $13,000 (and my parents spent significantly more) for me to study. There is at least one moment a day in which I think-- I should be writing. And I'm not. Ergo, I am a failure.

So back to the original question: should I give up writing, even the possibility of writing, so that I can stop beating myself up about not doing it?

Denise, thankfully, thinks not. And I put a large stock in what Denise thinks, so I'm hoping to give it another try, even though

• I have no good ideas
• The good ideas I do have revolve around people I know, and they're not exactly flattering ideas that they might want shared with the general public
• I am very, very tired of staring at a computer after a long day of auditing
• Writing would take away from valuable time that could be spent playing Guitar Hero, which I am also very good at

But I think I need a jump start. Denise had a really good idea: write a sizable check to an organization that I don't want to receive my money-- say, the Church of Scientology-- and give it to a friend. If I don't produce some writing by a predetermined deadline, said friend puts the check in the mail.

That might be a bit extreme, especially since I don't want Tom Cruise dancing on any couches with my money, considering he still owes me for Vanilla Sky. But something along those lines. Anyone have any suggestions?

People are talking on the loudspeaker at the elementary school across the street from my house, and it's giving the whole neighborhood a sort of creepy, V For Vendetta type feeling. A few minutes ago, two women were singing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" for the whole neighborhood to hear, which has vastly confused my notion about what could be going on-- talent show? But why would grown women be participating in an elementary school talent show? And do they not have any way to keep the announcements inside the building, rather than blasting from the air raid siren speakers on top of the building? As a former member of the Aurora High School announcement crew (until my fellow announcers and myself were forced to leave in a bloodless but still highly upsetting coup), I would have been mortified to know that stay-at-home moms in the surrounding neighborhood were woken every morning by my rendition of the Pledge of Allegiance.

After the blizzard

I have always loved extreme weather, no matter what the sort-- heat waves, hurricanes, endless rainstorms and face-melting wind. But for my money, nothing beats a good blizzard: the most peaceful destructive force there is. Blizzards like the one we had yesterday actually sometimes make me feel bad for people who live where there isn't any snow, because they never get to see the color of the sky as it's thick with snow, how bright it all is, even with no sun, and they don't get to see the way it shifts like sand, pooling, drifting, alive and on the move.



I was actually disappointed when I came outside at eleven o'clock last night and it had stopped-- only 37 hours? That's not nearly long enough for a blizzard in my opinion. Of course, my opinions may have been tainted because it was a Saturday, and I didn't have to go anywhere. Or rather I had to, but I couldn't. Another good thing about a blizzard-- it gives you an excuse to stay home and get your life back in order.

Anatomy of a Fall

I slipped and fell on the ice again this morning, marking the second such incident of the year thus far. Thankfully, the only person around to see it this time was Ben, who was much more sympathetic than The Asshole That Was Shoveling His Driveway and Did Nothing to Help when I fell last month.

As a person who slips and falls on ice more often than is strictly necessary, I have discovered that the incident is pretty much the same each go-round. It begins with The Shouting of an Expletive-- generally the F-Bomb-- at super-slow-motion speeds, sort of like when Ralphie spills the bolts in A Christmas Story. It then transitions into A Prolonged Period of Falling, which again, in slow motion, takes far longer than one would think. Then comes The Impact, followed quickly by A Short Period of Silence When the Realization That One Has Fallen and Is On The Ground, Cold and Wet, which is followed even more quickly by The Sobbing.

The Sobbing generally goes on far longer than needed-- this morning it accompanied me all the way to work, until I finally got bored with it and turned on Howard Stern.

The good news, though, is that all day, you are given permission to Act Sorer Than You Are and Relive the Fall, and everyone treats you nice and gives you things that they wouldn't normally give you, like their leftover Valentine's Day candy and their last Mike and Ike (which I guess would be either a Mike or an Ike).

Still, though, it is not a prospect I generally look forward to, which is why I received my crampons for Christmas (because nothing says "festive!" like crampons). It is important to note, however, that you cannot wear crampons all day, because they cause you to slip and fall if you're not wearing them outside, and it is equally important to note that my two falls have come on days when I felt the crampons unnecessary, thus rendering them pretty much useless at preventing slip-and-fall misery.

I've Been Everywhere

I'm back.

States visited in the last six days: Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana

Sporting events in which I sat in the front row: one

Funerals attended: one

Visits to Walgreen's: four

Number of bags of cheese curds purchased: two

Snowball fights had: one

Alpacas petted: one

Visits to Lambeau Field: one

All in all, a totally weird week.