Traders!

Because I know dudes think it's hot when I discuss sports (okay, so Ben does, anyway), I feel compelled to share with you the news that the Cavs have entered into a mamoo three-way trade, just before the trade deadline, that has us saying goodbye to Drew Gooden, Larry Hughes, Donyell Marshall, Ira Newble, and Two Guys I've Never Heard Of. In exchange, we will be getting Ben Wallace, Joe Smith, Delonte West, and Wally Szczerbiak.

I consider myself to be more educated in Cavs basketball than most girls, but I still don't pretend to be an expert on the subject, so I'm not sure how this trade will affect the team as a whole. (According to three different, totally unrelated guys in my office, we have "traded garbage for garbage," a phrase I feel must have been issued to them in their Meaningless Things That Guys Say Handbook.)

My own thoughts on the trade are varied.

Bad For Cavs:

1. I totally love Drew Gooden, even though most of the time he looks like he just escaped from an asylum for the mentally deranged. See above. In general, I become overly attached to sports figures, and nearly wept at the news that Drew was leaving town.

2. I do a really, really good impression of Donyell Marshall. Which would be impressive, if anyone had ever heard Donyell Marshall talk,but it turns out no one has. No one I know, anyway.

3. Ben Wallace plays center, and we already have a really good center in Zydrunas Ilgauskas. (See, I had to bust some actual sports knowledge on you there for a second.

Good For Cavs:

1. Wally Szczerbiak? Smoking hot. See left. And also, he went to Miami of Ohio for college, and it's always nice to have some hometown guys on your team. Word on the street is that Ben Wallace is from here, too.

2. We now have two players that could inspire a Wig Night at the Quicken Loans Arena, and a Ben Wallace wig would be even cooler than an Anderson Varejao wig.

3. Even though he hasn't played for Detroit in awhile, it might be nice to rub Ben Wallace in the Pistons' face.

So really, I guess my reasoning about the trade is more about what's good and bad for me, rather than for the Cavs. But no matter what the outcome, I would like to bid a fond farewell to Drew and Donyell-- you will be missed. Some people might miss Larry. But those people are idiots.

Thank you Cavs

Okay, so we were swept by the Spurs. But, we went to the Finals. And by we, I mean you. So thank you, Lebron, Z, Drew, Sasha, Booby, Andy, Larry, Eric, Donyell, and Damon (and even Scot Pollard). I am a witness.

Also, thank you for giving me my evenings back. Seriously.

We are the champions

Please note! This entry is not entirely about the Cleveland Cavaliers. Only partially. So please read it, because I am bleeding readers due to my Cavs obsession. But dammit, I cannot help the love!

I don't know if you've heard, but Cleveland kicked all of your cities' collective asses at basketball (except you, San Antonio-- not yet, anyway), which makes Cleveland better than all your cities, using my false logic, even those cities that don't have basketball teams at all, and therefore can't even participate.

The Cleveland Cavaliers are now, officially, the Eastern Conference Champions, which has never, ever, ever happened before, and are going to the NBA finals, which, if they win, will cause this entire city to erupt into a chaos the likes of which has not been seen since Old Testament days. I, for one, plan to turn some people into pillars of salt. I won't tell you which people. But they'd better be ready.

This is something that the people of Cleveland have needed for a long, long time. Approximately since the time that our river caught fire. Which hasn't happened since, all right? So shut up about it.

But there is one major downside to this-- the Cleveland Cavaliers are eating up pretty much all of my free time. If I'm not staking out a table at a restaurant so I have a prime seat to watch the game, or actually watching the game, or discussing the game for hours on end with Ben and the people at work, then I am frantically running around doing errands that should have been done on the nights when I was watching the game.

Bike riding? Gone. E-mail correspondence? Spotty, at best. Blog posting? Pathetic. (Although Pen and M, I think you have to admit that even though I'm ONLY blogging about the Cavs, I feel that I should be upgraded back to normal blogging status.) I have only two modes: Game mode, and Doing The Bare Minimum of the Rest of My Chores In Order To Survive mode.

Not only that, but the Cavs are single-handedly forcing me to gain weight! Because why make a salad at home, when I can enjoy this tasty burger and three beers at Panini's while watching the game? I tell you, I went to try on my dress this weekend for the first time, and it felt as if all my vital organs had been squeezed into a small knot at the center of my abdomen. And, I had back fat. Not good.

So Cavs, I love you. I love you more than any non-athletic, book-reading trombone player really has the right to love you. But please, just hurry up and beat the Spurs in four games so I can bask in your reflected glow just long enough to eat one more plate of onion rings at Panini's and then return to my regularly scheduled life events.

What I'm doing instead of blogging (my deepest apologies)

Player haters/

Elevators/

If you cross me/

you'll die

--Wise Lebron

Cavs win in double OT, go up 3-2 against Pistons. I am seriously in tears right now. Why? Why am I such a basketball tard?

Two weddings and a cookout

I know I've been absent from the blogscene for almost two weeks now, and I apologize (but come on, you didn't really miss me, did you?). But seriously, this has been a busy couple days, as I have been out:

1. Getting into a fight with Ben about the Cavs
2. Attending a wedding in Syracuse for Ben's cousin
3. Attending a second wedding less than 24 hours later back in Ohio for my good friend Marita
4. Eating too much food at a cookout at my parents' house
5. Booking an oboe trio to play at my wedding
6. Harrassing Ben about getting his save-the-date info together

and so on.

The weddings were of particular interest (although I'm sure there are some of you out there that would love to hear the particulars of my fight with Ben, which ended with me sobbing about how Sasha Pavlovic is purposefully trying to sabotage our chances at success), because they were the last two weddings I will ever attend as a single person, so I was trying really hard to inconspicuously take note of every single detail.

I did learn, at Ben's cousin's wedding, that Puerto Rican-style dancing is really fun to watch, but really, really difficult to do, especially when there's no alcohol involved. It also strengthened my resolve to not do the dollar dance, because surely no one would dance with me, and I would have to do the Carlton on the dance floor just to avoid looking unloved.

And at Marita's wedding, I learned that Marita does everything way cooler than me, and my wedding will look like a BBQ at the state park in comparison. And I learned that too much alcohol mixed with a lot of jumping up and down is not good for you.

All in all, an excellent weekend, especially since I got to meet Ben's family, who were totally awesome and really, really funny (and they laughed at my dumb jokes, which is a sure way to gain my trust). And of course much love to Marita and Chris, who (curiously enough) did the Carlton by dancing the wedding party dance to Sugarhill Gang's "Apache."

Congratulations, Kathy and Jose and Marita and Chris! Now, don't mind me as I shamelessly copy all your wedding secrets.

Good news/Bad news/Weird news

Good news: Despite rumors to the contrary, I have easily conquered the mail merge, effortlessly producing beautiful labels on clear sticky paper to be applied to my awesome, awesome save the date cards. (By "easily conquered," I mean "conquered after seven tries." But still!



Bad news: According to my parents, I have received a vaguely threatening letter from school, stating that I have defaulted on my student loans. First of all, let me state categorically that I have NOT defaulted on my student loans. I have, in fact, made every payment early since the first one in November 2004. This does not, however, stop me from having terrifying thoughts of somehow having not been informed about some clause stating that I needed to hand-deliver each and every copy of my cancelled checks to the registrar's office in that horrible building on-campus that smelled like sweat and pencil shavings, and that now, I owe the school some catastrophically high amount of money that will prevent me from taking a proper honeymoon, and I will end up spending it in Hershey, PA.

Good news: the Cavs won, which must mean that they are not pissed that I called their playing pathetic. This is probably a good sign that LeBron will, in fact, be attending my wedding, and bringing a totally awesome gift, and probably high-fiving me, at which point I will pee my pants.

Bad news: My MP3 player (which, Frisby, is 1G SanDisk Sansa) is still only playing the same songs-- fortunately, it has selected new ones, as I was getting really tired of fucking "Bad Day." The list is now:

• The Real Slim Shady, Eminem
• Stacy's Mom, Fountains of Wayne
• Seven Nation Army, The White Stripes
• Ready to Go, Republica
• We Can Work It Out, Stevie Wonder (still)

Weird news: Two girls at work witnessed a chipmunk attack and behead a bird, which I thought very odd, as chipmunks are supposed to be vegetarian, forcing me to worry that the chipmunk has rabies, and might charge out at me at any time and gnaw on my ankle, turning me into a rabid monster a la Teacake in Their Eyes Were Watching God, and someone will have to shoot me.

Kim smash!

So, my happiness level has decreased dramatically since my last post, due mostly to hormones (currently, my normal, happy self has been swallowed deep into the belly of an evil, raging monster who earlier today compared one of her co-workers unfavorably to a ball of yarn). Luckily for all involved, I did not Blog While PMSing (BWP), and have allowed myself to mellow out from Super Angry to Generally Pissed Off. About what, you ask? A number of things:

1. As I type this, the Cavs are losing in a most spectacular fashion. I don't have the sound on, but I imagine that they're just playing the audio track of one of the cameramen's daughter's middle school intramural games. It would probably sync up very nicely to the action.

2. No matter how many new songs I put on it, my MP3 player insists on playing only the following songs, again and again and again:

• End of the Movie, Cake
• Bad Day, Daniel Powter (I am the only person still to have this on their MP3 player, right?)
• We Can Work It Out, Stevie Wonder
• Zoot Suit Riot, Cherry Poppin' Dadies
• Jesus Walks, Kanye West

3. The railings on the stairs leading to the front door of my office building have been removed, and these vaguely ominous silver speed bumps have been put up along the stairs, ostensibly to prevent skateboarders from using our parking lot for their illicit purposes. I'm actually torn on this, because it seems sort of fascist, but also, I believe all skateboarders secretly make fun of me whenever I walk by.

4. Jaslene won America's Next Top Model, despite the fact that she is a man.

5. The dog went and slept on my pillow after a long walk in the rain, and now my pillow reeks of wet dogness.

6. Every time I tried to get a book from the shelf at the library today, a weird old man in a Lake County Captains raincoat magically appeared and wanted the same book. Or else he wanted me to look at his ween. I was not willing to find out.

7. In general, all people, everywhere, are annoying (except for you, my faithful blog readers, who are cool and understanding of my Incredible Hulk-esque tranformation, and know in your hearts that I will become a functional member of society again within a few short days).

In conclusion, someone needs to invent something, other than wine, to which I am allergic, that can free me from this hormone driven beast! Please, do something! Before I start bitch-slapping nuns and kicking the invalid!

NOTE: LeBron James just got hurt, probably because I wrote something crappy about the Cavs. I am the worst person ever.

Happy Happy Joy Joy

Things haven't been too exciting around here (with the exception of Amy's big 30th birthday blowout), so I apologize for my lack of bloggyness. But, I have exciting news-- I crossed the 20,000 hit threshold yesterday! Because I am a gigantic web-counter whore, this obviously makes me very happy.

Other things that have been making me happy lately:

*My super-sleuthing skills, which led me to find Amy D., long-lost trombone hero (p.s.: Amy, I sent you an e-mail at your [probably very old] yahoo account-- write me back, or else.

*TiVo's sudden, intense desire to tape old episodes of the cartoon classic Home Movies, which is about the greatest show ever made.

*That commercial where Dwyane Wade tells Charles Barkley that his old short shorts make him look "sexxxy."

*The imminent arrival of the sample of my save the date cards, which is totally going to blow your mind with its sheer awesomeness.

*The smiling, non-thuggy pictures of my favorite Cavaliers (I have a problem with athletes who feel the need to look like they want to beat the shit out of me in their team photos):

*The fact that I had a column in the Dispatch last Wednesday-- it didn't run online, but e-mail me and I'll send you a scan of the article if you're in the market for funny shit involving the name Mojo and mounted police.

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!

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.