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.

Short Break: a Haiku

Going out of town
Please don't bump me off your list
Back on Monday night

Sick puppy

Ben has had the worst cold for about a week now-- probably the worst cold he's had in years. Which is interesting, because whenever I get a really bad cold, he gets one that seems way less intense, but which he firmly believes is just as bad as mine. Bad enough, in fact, that he should be allowed to watch copious amounts of golf all day, even though I'm the one that just hacked up a small but probably necessary portion of my lung.

This always used to make me kind of mad, because I am the type of person who once had bronchitis for over a month and still managed to live a totally normal life, despite the fact that my voice inexplicably went up two octaves and that I was expelling custardy-looking globulets of phlegm from various holes in my head, so I don't like it when other people try to steal my sickness thunder.

But now that he is so sick, I find myself waiting for even the slightest onset of a sore throat, or an errant sneeze, and with every passing moment that it doesn't come, I'm just a little disappointed. I still don't know what it means, but I'm starting to see where he's coming from-- it's kind of no fun being healthy when your husband and best friend is sick. And, you have to give up your rights to the couch for an indefinite period of time, which is enough to make anyone wish for a tickly throat.

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.

The girls in my neighborhood are unacceptable.

Why, for instance, do the girls in my neighborhood travel in packs down the sidewalk in the dead of winter, talking so loudly that I can hear their entire conversation from a block away? Because you know what? I am not even slightly interested in what happened to Lakeisha in Mr. Palmer's third period today. But I know what happened. And it wasn't even interesting. Why talk so loudly about such boring things, Lakeisha? Perhaps, just perhaps, this is why Mr. Palmer has not taken a liking to you.

Also, why do I develop a paranoid fear of having to talk to these girls, to the point where I will yank my dog at a breakneck pace down an icy sidewalk for a whole block just to avoid having to interact with them? I don't have this problem with the boys in my neighborhood. Of course, the boys in my neighborhood, in general, are not interested in talking to a weirdly-dressed woman with a big, crazed dog.

(As a side note, I always feel poorly dressed when I'm walking the dog, mainly because of every episode of What Not to Wear, where Stacey and Clinton made it REAL OBVIOUS that they feel that you should still wear heels and an expensive scarf and a tightly tailored black blazer while walking the dog, even in the dead of winter.)

But I will totally go out of my way to avoid talking to the girls. One, because they talk too loudly, and I'm afraid if I'm right up next to them they might actually burst my eardrum. But two, because they scare the crap out of me.

I don't know if this is a leftover from middle school, where interactions with big groups of girls usually ended in tears, or what.

Point is, they are unacceptable. Or I'm unacceptable. Or something. I don't really know what the point is. I just got back from walking the dog, and ran into these girls, and now I'm in here, blogging. Quietly. Mr. Palmer would be proud.

Dear C Store Owner/Proprietor,

I don't know if you're aware, but the dictionary definition of "convenient" (which, I can only assume, is what the "C" in "C Store" stands for) is as follows:

1.	Suitable or agreeable to the needs or purpose; well-suited with respect to facility or ease in use; favorable, easy, or comfortable for use.

2.	At hand; easily accessible

That have been established, I feel that your store does not lend itself to this word in any respect, considering that you are always closed when I walk the dog in the morning (and I am not one of those freakishly-early dog-walkers-- no, C Store Man, I walk the dog at the perilously late time of 7:00 a.m. every morning-- even later on weekends, and you are still not open), and you are already closed by the time I get back from work at the relatively early time of 6:00 p.m.

For whom, exactly, are these hours "convenient?" Are there many people in my neighborhood who find themselves in need of cigarettes, soda or lottery tickets (which is, I assume, all that you sell, since I have never actually been able to make it inside to check out your wares) between the hours of eleven and three in the afternoon? Even the convenient store I used to frequent in Wilmington, which turned out to be a front for a heroin ring, was open from six a.m. to midnight!

Therefore, I am afraid that I must insist that the "C" in "C Store" be changed to stand for "Crap-ass", or "Clearly Unacceptable." Because you are never open when I need candy, or soda, or more candy, or bread, which you may or may not sell. And this forces me to drive all the way to Willowick (I could stop at Euclid Mart, but it also a Clearly Unacceptable store, in that it does not take credit cards, and as any decent shopkeep should know, the only good way to buy candy is on credit), which, though it is only six minutes away, it about five minutes too many, since you are located directly across the street from my house, next to The Overly Doughy Pizza Shop and the Intermittently Open But Otherwise Very Satisfying Custard Stand.

In closing, I hate you.

All best,
Kim

What's the frequency, readers?

Okay, let's not beat around the bush-- I am not blogging as much as I should be. I understand that, but as of late, I have also come to understand a terrible truth:

I'm just not as in to blogging as I used to be.

I don't know why-- part of me thinks that (downer alert) I might be having a little bit of a depression problem again (which might be great, because as everyone knows, I'm at least 30% more hilarious when depressed, although 90% of you aren't actually around me to witness it). But then, it might be that The Part That Wants to Start Writing a Book is becoming more aggressive, and wants more time for that. Although if that's the case, I wish it would just Get Started, as opposed to stranding me on the couch for hours a night either reading books by other people or, even worse, honing my Guitar Hero skills.

But either way, I've either got to shut the blog down, or get off my ass, because my posts just aren't good enough to sustain a twice-a-month posting schedule.

So here's what I propose-- from now until April 1, I will attempt to blog every day (barring times that I go out of town, which should only be once or twice), but the blog posts will probably only be a paragraph long, max.

Is this something you guys would be interested in? Or is the twice-monthly post sufficient? Or is it just time for me to hang up my spurs completely? Wait, don't answer that one. Because it's never really been a dream of mine to hear the phrase, "Yeah, it's probably better if you just quit writing now." If I want to hear that, I'll check in with my old poetry professor.

Please advise.

Scared: straight?

As hard as I try to focus on the upcoming presidential election, I cannot escape the demon that has been chasing me around every corner, greeting me every morning in the mirror, staring back at me from countless photographs:

I think my hair is turning straight.

This, I believe, is totally unfair, as it took me until the age of 21 to even embrace the fact that I had curly hair; until this point, I wore my hair in a puffy haystack configuration, seen below:

(I got the idea for the parted bangs from Madonna's Immaculate Collection liner art, and stuck with it for far too long.)

Upon finally understanding that, like being left-handed or severely awesome, both of which I am, curly hair can be a major attribute in life, particularly in Attaining a Dude, I began to wear it that way all the time, thus ushering in a seven-year golden age the likes of which few hair-wearers have ever had the chance to experience.

But lately-- specifically since one week after my wedding, when I got my hair cut short again-- I have noticed a terrifying de-curled trend in my hair. Witness the artfully-crafted before and after shot below:

The photo on the left, taken at my cousin Jennifer's wedding in 2006, shows a shiny, sassy head full of super springy curls. The photo on the right, taken just a few weeks ago on my trip to Richmond with Megan and Matt, tells a much bleaker, limper tale.

So what has caused this grim transformation? A few theories:

1. After wearing my hair long for so long, it was not prepared to shrink back up into curls upon this, my most dramatic cut in a few years. However, I have had this cut since October now, and it is clearly Still Horrible.

2. My hair is turning gray at an alarming rate, and gray hair has a different texture than straight hair. Unacceptable.

3. Now that I have a super-sexy husband, my hair has given up the fight needed for Dude Attaining, and is taking a much-needed break.

4. The price of gas has uncurled it.

I could go on and on. But now is not a time for words, it is a time for action. And for spending lots of money I don't have on expensive conditioners and gels that I found on the Internet (they should be here next Wednesday!). In the meantime, I ask that you keep my curls in your thoughts, that they may recover from this malaise and return to their peppy selves, before they give up the fight completely, and I end up looking like Julie Andrews in Victor/Victoria.

Thank you, and God bless.

Buyer's Market

In an effort to follow the Blueprint of Happiness as close as humanly possible (because I'm the kind of person that can really fuck a thing up if I don't follow the directions), Ben and I have decided to take the plunge into the homeowner's pool (figuratively. We're not literally planning on jumping into some homeowner's pool, which would probably really mess up their homeowner's insurance and cause a whole mess of problems for everyone).

Technically, we're not even suppose to start looking at places until April, but secretly, each of us looks at probably a million houses a day online, all in the name of research. But really, we have already decorated the insides of each and every one of these houses in our mind, him with Rothko paintings and tasteful golf paraphernalia, and me with Ric Flair action figures and my Tintin en Amerique poster.

I don't know why Ben is doing it, but my reasoning is perfectly clear: my boss is about to buy a house, and by God, I can't let him have something that I don't have.

But really, I'm not sure why I'm getting so worked up over this, considering how hectic our last house-hunting experience was-- the house we were living in sold, and we had three weeks to find a place, pack our shit, and be gone. Our lowest point during this turbulent time found us screaming Fuck You! a lot at the top of our lungs, and weeping bitterly during the song "Wake Me Up When September Ends." Okay, both of those things were really just me.

But then again, that was also the magical time that we met Hans, a jolly landlord of a property in Concord, who invited us onto his yacht for beer and a spin around Lake Erie. Hans let me drive the boat (although he called it navigating) and also told a guy on a Ski-Doo that he should take me for a ride on it, because, and I quote, "She's not wearing any underwear." Which I totally was, by the way.

We didn't end up taking Hans' condo, but we did drop some beer off at his house as a thank you for our time on the yacht, which prompted him to call us and invite us over to drink it with him. (I saved that voicemail for, like, three years.) We never did go help him drink it, and I still wonder sometimes what would have happened if we had.

Probably we would be chained up in his basement right now like dogs. But doesn't a yacht make everything seem that much more magical?

Drama in Real Life

For the past week or so, I have been suffering from extremely achy joints-- particularly my lower back and knees. While most people would attribute this to the mild flu I caught last week, and to the fact that we keep our house at 60 degrees to avoid a repeat of the Dreaded $255 Gas Bill, I fear that there is a more sinister plot in action.

When I was little, I read an installment of "Drama in Real Life" in my parents' copy of Reader's Digest that described a woman that woke up with some aches and pains-- like me!-- that got progressively worse over the course of several days-- like me!-- and then her body shut down completely, the only warning being her achy joints, and she remained in a locked-in state for over three years, forced to communicate only by blinking her eye-- her one non-locked-up eye-- a certain number of times to indicate a letter on a chart. Eventually she recovered, but she was never quite the same. I believe she wrote a book about the experience. But I didn't read the book. I only read "Drama in Real Life," and internalized the fact that if my joints ache, there is a very good chance that I will be confined to a hospital bed, being wiped off with sponges by indifferent nurses every few days and blinking furiously to spell out things like "If only I had gone to the doctor to treat my achy joints before it was too late!"

And that is why parents of nervous children should not subscribe to Reader's Digest.

Swingers

How many of you lay awake at night, wondering exactly how Ashley and I are going to vote? Show of hands?

Okay, put 'em down. Because your prayers have been answered.

It is with great pomp and circumstance that Ashley and I are proud to introduce our newest blog, Swing State, into the national consciousness.

We don't know who we're voting for, and we don't have a clue what we're talking about (yet), but we want to share the whole schmiel with you-- we invite your comments, your ideologies, your rants and your raves, as long as the last two are directed at actual candidates, and not at us.

If we wanted to be ranted at, we'd run for office ourselves. Except we can't, because we're not old enough. And our platform would be built entirely of candy.

My name is Richard Henry Lee

In an effort to keep hidden what is obviously a deathly character flaw, I have managed, until now, to keep quiet about my insane love for the musical 1776, which I was introduced to in the seventh grade by the venerable Mrs. Balbach, social studies teacher extraordinaire. Ostensibly a teaching tool to help seventh-grade Aurorans learn more about the goings-on leading up to the writing of the Declaration of Independence, I saw it more as The World's Greatest Thing Ever, and proceeded to tape it (but where? Where in God's name were they showing this on television in 1991?) and watch it approximately seven bazillion times, to the point where I knew where the main characters took a breath between lines.

While other kids were listening to Pearl Jam and C & C Music Factory (the first one I am ashamed to have missed; the second, not so much), I was sitting one inch from the television, holding up a tape recorder so I could make recordings of the songs that I liked best, and then listen to them in my room like the social pariah that I was. I also transcribed the lyrics-- poorly, it turns out, as I appear to have just made up several words entirely in my transcription-- and memorized large portions of the dialogue, which I then unleashed upon the unsuspecting teachers behind the drama club, who no doubt thought it whimsical (or totally, creepily disgusting) that a then-fourteen-year-old girl would know John Adams' opening monologue (which I still know, by the way).

In my free time, which I had a lot of, I carefully choreographed how I would act out each scene, on the off-chance that William Daniels, who played John Adams in the movie (and was also, incidentally, the voice of KITT and Mr. Feeney on Boy Meets World) would show up at my house, frantically crying "Dear God, is Kim home? Because we have an off-Broadway showing in half an hour, and there's no one who can play Richard Henry Lee quite like her!" Because in specific, I was going to be Richard Henry Lee, whose song, "The Lees of Old Virginia," is quite possibly the greatest song ever recorded in the annals of human history.

Luckily, I grew up and got hot and met a man despite this obvious mental problem, and was able to shove my love for 1776 and Richard Henry Lee to the back of my mind (although did you know that Richard Henry Lee and I share a birthday? Which is an obvious sign that I am meant to play him at at least the community theater level). That is, until just a few days ago, when I returned from a trip to Richmond to visit Megan, Matt and Madelyn-- a fateful trip that involved a side stop at the Virginia Capitol Building, and a tour prominently featuring the architect of the Declaration himself, Thomas Jefferson (and a passing reference to Richard Henry Lee, which caused me to get all crazy and poke Megan furiously in the side until she made me stop).

So last night, Ben and I popped in my DVD of 1776 (where did I get a DVD of 1776? Did the nerd side of me bludgeon the cool side and drag my body to That's Entertainment to pick up a copy while I was in a comatose state?) and watched it up to the point where they sing "Mama, Look Sharp," which is, as everyone knows, where all the good songs end, and it really just becomes a boring movie about the Declaration of Indendence instead of a rousing good-time musical romp. And this morning, I dragged out my original Broadway cast recording and made Jeni listen to it, much the same way I forced my high school friends to listen to the bootleg tape I had made from the television.

Then I Googled Ron Holgate, the guy who played Richard Henry Lee. And then I stopped, because I felt way, way lame for even remembering his name after all these years.

What you missed

So I know I've been away awhile, and that this is not a good start to my New Year's Resolution to Blog More. And I haven't really been doing all that much interesting, but in case anyone needs a quick catch-up:

*I have decided that I really don't like my new haircut. This was preceded by a few days in which I tried really hard to like it. But I just don't. It frizzes out easily, returning to the dreaded Vanessa Cosby Affair, after only a few hours. Also, it makes my face look weird.

*I'm about to finish reading Joe Perotta's The Abstinence Teacher, which is really good, but which I fear is about to come to a very abrupt end. I'm starting to notice a theme in Perotta's books, which I'm not too pleased with, because I never like writers who write the same thing again and again. Which is funny, since my entire thesis really should have been called Look At Me, I'm Ugly and Patently Uncool.

*Ben got my Guitar Hero III for my birthday, which I have already defeated on easy, because I rock hard. I'm now attempting to conquer it on medium, which is proving slightly more difficult, because apparently my pinky finger operates totally independently of the rest of my fingers, and just flails wildly between buttons.

*I've also been playing a lot of Brain Age on my Nintendo DS (I am a Nintendo loyalist, something that perhaps would make a great addition to Look At Me, I'm Patently Uncool Part 2: Slightly Better Looking. I have a brain age of 28, which is pretty impressive for someone who spends most of her time looking at Postsecret.com and reading the National Enquirer.

The biggest news I have is that I'm getting really close to getting back into writing. Not that I have any concrete ideas yet (sorry, those of you holding out for another incarnation of The John Boston Story), but I've been feeling compelled to write down all the weird crap I'm seeing every day, in hopes of sandwiching it into a book. I'm not sure where I'm planning on going, but I'm leaning towards a cubicle-based work drama (too bad for me, since the book Then We Came to the End did just that, and made the top 10 book list in several places). All I know is, I have procured the perfect journal pen, and am now in search of the perfect journal, which generally is either an orange spiral bound college ruled notebook, or a composition book. Both easily acquired at your friendly neighborhood Target, but I'm a little too mired in the Guitar Hero realm to work up the energy to score one.

So wish me luck-- if I do get into writing more, I might have to lay off the blog a bit, but my Write Something, Dammit resolution will generally trump my Blog More resolution if I can ever get up the nerve to get back on the horse.

By horse I mean writing. Not heroin, which I have never been on. Just to make myself clear. Although it might help with my rocking abilities.

Cute or horrible? You decide!

I don't mean to alarm you, but I just had a horrible crime committed against me, out in full view of many onlookers, who stood by and did nothing, some--yes, some-- even standing by with a bemused look of pity on their faces.

That's right. I got a shitty haircut.

And not just any shitty haircut-- I got The Dreaded Reverse Mullet. Something that, about once every five years, some horrible, freak-headed maven perpetrates against me, assuring me that this time it will be different. This one totally tricked me by pointing out another girl in the salon, with curly hair like mine, and saying "See how nice Denise's hair is? I'll give you the same cut as Denise."

But she didn't give me the same cut as Denise. She gave me Satan's Cut-- about an inch long in the back, five inches long in the front, with big poufy spaniel-ear wings.

Now, to be fair, I have come home and washed it, and it looks yards better than it did in the salon, when she proceeded to blow dry it (this may not sound like much of an assault to those of you with straight hair, but my curly-headed brethren will gasp at the horror of being blown dry without a diffuser), giving me roughly the same hairdo that Vanessa sported in the middle years of The Cosby Show. The awkward middle years.

So now I can't decide if it looks funky cute or funky horrible. I am posting a picture here for your input, although I must warn you that the picture is, I think, an unfair representation of the cut as a whole, in that it makes it look shiny and defined, something that will fade after about twenty minutes of being exposed to such rough elements as direct light, oxygen and the gentle breeze of my heating system.

Also be aware, before you accuse me of overreacting, that it is dramatically, and inexplicably, shorter in the back. I tried to get a picture of that, but I'm home alone, and my arms just don't bend that way.

Okay, the more I look at it, it might be funky cute, rather than funky horrible. But my neck is cold, and I'm feeling sort of exposed, like I put my slip on backwards.

Kimbo's Snowy New Year

I will be back tomorrow with more in-depth reporting on all things year-change related-- best and worst, my Probably Not Going to Happen resolutions, et cetera. But I thought I would help you ring in the new year with this exceptionally awesome shot of myself, after returning from a walk with the dog into a blizzard:




I am so super-hot.

It Ain't Christmas if You Don't Rock Out Loud

Another Christmas has come and gone-- I had a lot of trouble getting in the spirit this year, mostly because in the wake of all the wedding hub-bub, I kind of forgot that I had to continue on with the remainder of life's tasks (what? I had to organize a wedding and pick out presents for every member of my family? This excuse also works well with getting your teeth cleaned, paying your bills, and vacuuming your carpet).

But around one o'clock on Christmas afternoon, my cousin Katie broke out her newest game-- Guitar Hero II for the PS2-- and the Christmas Spirit struck. And it turns out the Christmas Spirit is remarkably like the basist for Foghat.

All I know is, this game is the video equivalent of crack-- I would gladly have remained at my parents' house for up to eighty hours, helping Katie promote our new band, Grubmonkey, to new levels of success. Sadly, I was actually kind of a hindrance to Grubmonkey, as I routinely forgot to actually strum the guitar, or got confused between red and yellow, or realized that "Surrender" is not actually the song I thought it was. But I think she was still all right with me being in the band, as kind of a Ringo character, only without the awesome haircut.

Luckily for me, there's a version for the Wii, and it includes two of my all-time favorite songs: "My Name is Jonas," by Weezer, and "Rock and Roll All Nite" by KISS (which I played in marching band, so that's bound to give me a leg up on the competition). However, this game is not available ANYWHERE in the nation, except maybe at K-Mart, and, having solemnly vowed to let K-Mart die with dignity, I cannot spend any more money there, at least until they get wise to Sears' soul-crushing succubus nature.

So it's officially on my birthday list, but I was kind of hoping we could pretend that my birthday is today, and that I would magically find a copy lying in the bushes outside my house, so that I could turn it into the rock temple that it deserves to be.

In the meantime, I suppose I could go and get the ACTUAL guitar my parents gave me out of the basement and play that to take some of the edge off. But it seems like kind of a downer if I can't use it to interpret "Heart Shaped Box," which I can't, because I never learned to play it, and there may or may not be mice living in the guitar case.

A Very Crunchy Christmas

Dear Friends of Kim,

It is I, Crunchy! The angry Christmas nutcracker. Bask in my return to cyber-typing!

Some of you may not know me, Crunchy, because Kim was infected with the so-called "Christmas Spirit" last year at this time, leaving me, Crunchy, silent on the writing desk, surrounded by pictures of black-and-white old timey people of which Crunchy does not approve. Even though they do not move, Crunchy can see that their jaws are capable of free movement, and their legs are not really one big, non-working wooden leg with roundish planks for feet.

But this year Crunchy is back with a very special Christmas message, which is this: your Kim is a bad person! Because does she write you Christmas cards? No, she does not! I can see her right now, from my old-timey people perch-- she is playing Nintendo Wii! And not sitting in her chair writing you cards of good will wishes.

She claims that this is because she is tired out of writing cards, because of her thank you card writing debacle. But if she is so tired, how has she managed to become a pro at the Wii Tennis, with so much limb flailing and the cursing of small animated computer tennis players?

The truth of the matter is, only Crunchy loves you. And by loves you, I mean does not like you at all, again because of your working jaws and non-conjoined legs.

So rise up in your unhappiness at the Kim-not-writing-cards fooferau! Adopt the Crunchy as your new favorite Oja! You will be most satisfied, as Crunchy was built for loving you.

All best,

Crunchy

The Angry Christmas Nutcracker

What follows is a list of all the words I have added to my e-mail dictionary at work:

ACCS
Acord
Argh
ain't
argh
awesomest
BFD
Boobie
babearoo
bachelorette
bizarro
bleah
blizzarding
blog
blogged
Cavs
CC'ed
Che
Chex
COI
COIs
Cyn
convincingjohn
cystoscopy
d'oh
dammit
EMFH
effing
eHarmony
ew
Fatone
Favre
Fazoli's
fraggle
Goulet
Grr
gangsta
gangstas
gonna
gotta
gushies
Hee
Itza
Itzen
insureds
journazine
Lambeau
LPR
Maimo
Mamie
Marita
Marklar
Mmm
microsite
mojo
monoline
mopey
moreso
mostest
NARM
Netflix
Ow
Paychex
pooing
poopy
punked
RIU
Ric
rad
Sasha
SIF
Stix
Superdude
sads
sammich
snarky
sorta
TiVo
veg
Whatcha
Wii
WriMeBaMoFo
wanna
weirded
wuss
Xtreme
Yay
Yo

PS:

In addition to accomplishing all the tasks listed below, I would also like to add that I managed to fall down a flight of stairs and cut my palm with a bread knife in a two-hour window this morning. I'm really just waiting to slip and bruise my tailbone while walking the dog in this white-out blizzard to really complete the trifecta.

Busybody

I don't know what, exactly, prompted this change, but while I used to be perfectly happy to wallow in my own filth, ignoring my e-mails in favor of lying on the couch with an open box of Pizza Hut breadsticks resting on my chest while watching old episodes of The Family Feud, I have now become some sort of taskaholic, running from to-do list to to-do list with the fervent obsessiveness of an Ethel Merman fan.

Not that I want to go back to living in a pet-hair-clogged super toilet, but really, I think I'm starting to take things a little far. For example, Ben is out of town this weekend. Instead of relaxing and enjoying a few hours to myself, I accomplished the following things:

• Finished thank you cards (praise whatever deity controls thankfulness-related endeavors!)


• Went to lunch with a good friend


• Bought a Christmas present for my mom (on behalf of my dad, which sucks, but it's all the costliness of buying a present with none of the glory)


• Cleaned every room of my house, including the bathroom, which still smells chlorine-fresh 24 hours later


• Vacuumed-- twice


• Emptied the trash, which is no easy feat, because we have one of those metal horseshoe garbage cans with the impossible-to-remove bags


• Did two loads of laundry


• Wrapped remaining Christmas presents


• Went to the grocery store, narrowly avoiding the blizzard that has settled over Cleveland (and which, annoyingly, prevented me from going to the Browns game today, which is what I was actually supposed to be doing instead of all this)


• Answered all my e-mails


• Made a CD (using a burner; I did not actually go to a studio and make a CD, although I think the world would really clamor for a copy of Kim Oja Sings Neil Diamond in the Voice of Tom Jones)

And now I'm writing my blog, which was the last thing on a long list of to-dos I had amassed for myself. There are still a few more things that need to be accomplished today, such as walking the dog and packing my lunch, but then I think I'll finally have accomplished my entire list.

I guess I've been trying to catch up ever since the wedding, but really ever since I got engaged, and with the latest flurry of to-do activity I am pleased to announce that I am finally, blissfully left without anything to do. The possibilities are endless-- do I work on a novel? Organize my file cabinet? Reread the entire Harry Potter series? Stage a Clue marathon?

All I know is, my chest is in for some major table duty tonight! Watch out, arteries, because the Pizza Hut breadsticks are back in the picture!

You're welcome

Number of thank you cards written tonight: 26

Number of thank you cards sealed into envelopes with this error: 25

This! This is what I get for wanting to be cute and have Ben sign the cards in his own hand-writing! Twenty-five cards going out saying "Love, Kim & "!

People who will be receiving this limited edition fuck-up card include:

1. The minister

2. The DJ

3. My boss

4. My mom's boss

Oh, my God. Please kill me now. Because there is no effing way I'm opening those envelopes and fixing this. Not tonight. Probably not ever. Because I don't have enough sticky labels left to redo the addresses, and by God, I am not doing them by hand!

Maybe? People will think my fancy ampersand is, like, a fancy, fucked-up letter O? And that I just decided to sign all my cards "Kim O," like in a fun, familial way?

Okay. If you're one of the people who receives this particular card, I apologize. If you really want, I'll have Ben stop by your house and sign your card next time we're in town.

Love,

Kim O

My optometrist speaks*

*This monologue was actually performed by my optometrist at my eye exam this afternoon. While I may not have gotten it down verbatim, there is no embellishment on my part.

"I like your sweater. I like green things. I have so much green-- green sweaters, green pants, green shoes-- wait, I take that back. No green shoes.

"What size shoes do you wear? Sevens? Oh. My. God. You must go to the Clarks store. At Beachwood Mall? The Clarks store? They have the greatest shoes there. Green shoes. With lambskin insides. They're the kind of shoes with the little foothole? That you just have to kind of dig your foot into? Well, I was wearing really loose socks when I tried them on, and the foothole pulled the socks too tight, and I was like, these shoes make my socks tight! Anyway, my mom bought some shoes there, but not the green ones, which I wanted, but they didn't come in my size-- that's why I asked you what size you were, so you could go buy them, because you seem like the kind of person that would like green shoes. So you must go buy them.

"And then? My mom and I went to Sephora-- at Beachwood Mall, you know? I love Sephora. I bought $150-- $156, I mean-- I bought $156 worth of stuff there. My husband is going to go nuts! But I was out of face cream-- I haven't bought a face cream since 2002-- and I was like, why not, right? But the one I wanted, it was a milk-based one, I think, I can't remember now, but it was the one I really wanted, anyway-- they were out of it, so I bought this one that has a little clay in it. Cambrian clay? Have you heard of this? Oh, my God. They make it into everything. They make the moisturizer, and they make this shampoo that is so good... I have an itchy head-- no dandruff, but itchy, right?-- and this stuff just worked wonders. And they make this clay toothpaste, with is naturally flavored with lemon and mint, and my gums bleed when I get my period? So I use the clay toothpaste and that doesn't happen.

"Anyway, some of that shit I'm going to wrap up and put in my own stocking and say Santa put it there, because what's my husband going to do, yell at me in front of his parents? Although it kind of sucks, because I already know what I'm getting for Christmas, mostly... my mom bought me some Clarks, but not the green Clarks, because they didn't have my size, and this shearling coat from Lands' End, but it's faux shearling, so it's washable, which is good, because I tend to wreck my coats. And then the stuff from Sephora, which is really from me, but I have to put it in my stocking so my husband can't get mad that I spent $156 on face shit from Sephora.

"But really, it's so unfair, because he does like nothing to his skin, and it's perfect. He washes it with bar soap and then puts Curel on it. Curel! Like the hand cream! On his face! If I use shit like that, it gives me hives. Or something. Some kind of itchy welt. I think that's hives, right? And I have such greasy skin. It's like, I could wipe my fingers on my face and grease a cookie pan.

"Okay, anyway. What did you come in for again?"

Rabid!

Rabies has been popping up far too often for my taste lately. First, in the season premiere of my (sadly cut short by the writers' strike) all-time favorite show, The Office, in which Michael staged a fun run to raise rabies awareness; then in Rant, Chuck Palahniuk's newest book, in which the main character starts a rabies epidemic. But most disturbingly in a show that our TiVo thought we would enjoy, "The Girl Who Survived Rabies," the title of which is pretty much self-explanatory.

My previous encounters with rabies were pretty much limited to Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, in which the main character is forced to kill her beloved Tea Cake (who is a human, and not a lap dog, despite the connotations of his name) when he is infected with the disease. Rabies is something that happens to characters in 20th Century Literature Class novels, not to me!

But now, surrounded by this glut of rabies mania, I am forced to assume my fallback position, which is, if everyone is talking about it, then I probably have it. Which is why, at two o'clock today when I cut my finger on the bathroom paper towel dispenser, a danger sign flashed: RABIES!

I am completely and totally aware that paper towel dispensers are not alive, and thus incapable of carrying the rabies virus. But at that moment, I fully expected to begin foaming at the mouth and develop an irrational fear of water, and figured by the end of the night, Ben would have dispatched me neatly with a shotgun.

What is the lesson in this? Has my rabies awareness been raised too much? Should I stop trusting TiVo? Am I, maybe, a bit too paranoid? Are the terror segments on local news channels meant for me?

I don't know. But all this talk of tea cakes is making me hungry.

Please and Thank You

The wedding has been over for almost two months, but I'm still struggling with getting my thank you cards out. Not that I'm not thankful-- really I'm nothing but thankful-- but the idea of writing 67 thank you cards makes my stomach clench up in the most unpleasant way.

There's also the added stress of being known as "the writer of the family," which is hilarious since I haven't written anything longer than a humor column on my insane urge to pee in like three years; but still, having this moniker comes with some expectations-- that you'll eventually write a best-seller and buy your dad a Ferrari; that Oprah may pick your book and yell excitedly about it in her weird baritone and millions of women will buy it and it will be made into a mini-series starring Kirstie Alley; and that you will write unique, one-of-a-kind thank you cards that accurately convey the true warmth and appreciation that one's contribution of a Deluxe Downy Ball Fabric Softener Gift Pack has afforded you.

So far, I have written ten of the aforementioned 67, but at least two need to be rewritten in light of recent developments (developments I could probably have avoided addressing in my already difficult thank you letters if I had gotten them done in October, as I had originally planned). And I am unsure when any more will be gotten to in light of the holiday season, which has T-boned me like a drunken Santa on a souped-up sleigh-- if I don't get my butt in gear, I'll have to add a sizeable amount of Christmas thank you cards to the pack.

To those of you whom I owe a thank you card, please rest assured that I am extremely thankful, not only for your gifts, but more importantly for your well-wishes and for daring to come to Cleveland in the first place (we have a lake!). The cards will be in the mail posthaste-- right after I make up my Christmas list, clean up my house, decorate for the holidays, get rid of the thirty pounds of wedding-related reading materials that I have acquired in the past year, attend a free showing of The Golden Compass, rearrange my Netflix list, make several batches of Chex Mix, and finish the three library books I started reading before Thanksgiving.

I promise.

I hate this.

I've begun to realize that I say the phrase "I hate" far too much. I think I've always said it a little too often, using it to denote things that annoyed me, rather than things I truly hated. And that's still the way I use it, but I hear it coming from my mouth with alarming frequency, and, as an addendum to my New Year's Resolution to be less angry, would like to curb it.

So, in an effort to direct my attention away from the things that I hate, allow me to list some things that I love:

• My husband
• My family
• My friends
• My pets
• The Office
• The new Kanye West CD, which I know I gave only a middling grade to before, but with which I am now totally obsessed. As a side note, I would love to be as confident as Kanye, with lines like "I think it's time you should get behind me but my head's so big you can't sit behind me."
• LeBron James
• Ric Flair (yes, I still love Ric Flair)
• Winter
• Cake (the band, not the food-- I don't actually really like cake very much)
• Bacon bits
• Babies
• David Sedaris
• Sloppy Joes
• Target
• Mix CDs
• Post Secret

And many more!

So there's still a lot of love to go around, even if I kind of hate the way I've been feeling lately...

You won't like me when I'm angry.

When I was in graduate school (which is a phrase I very much enjoy saying, because it reminds me of a time when I was actually a writer, as opposed to an auditor, which is still fine, but not quite as impressive), I went to a counselor named Etta who diagnosed me with an anger problem, which fucking pissed me off.

Because at the time, I did not see myself as particularly angry. It would make me mad, yes, when I would go to visit Etta and tell her I was doing very well that particular week, and she would say, "Okay, great! Let's talk about when you were nine and you were ugly and no one liked you." So maybe she got a skewed view of the situation. But that was more of an Etta problem than an anger problem.

But now I'm starting to wonder if maybe I really sort of do have an anger problem, at least lately.

At first I was just taking it out on passing traffic. Normally, I am a very friendly driver, and don't get stressed much if I'm running late or the traffic flow is moving slowly. But lately, I find myself leaning forward in my seat, kept in place only by my strap, ready to leap through my windshield and throttle those people who do not feel it necessary to abide by the speed limit, or who turn without their signals on. I also get angry at cute license plates and cars with ribbon magnets on them, because I feel if they really cared about their particular causes, they would man up and put a sticker on their car, rather than a removable magnet.

I've also become more of an angry person at work-- that person that you don't really want to go near, because they might launch into a diatribe about how it might be wise to give employees more than four days' notice that they're going to change the health insurance.

And Ashley got an earful of something I was angry about the other day-- I don't remember what it was, but I was pretty super pissed.

So one of my New Years' Resolutions this year (and I do make them early, in order to get used to the idea of sticking to them) is to become less of an angry person. Since I don't know how I got angry in the first place, this might be sort of difficult, but I'm definitely going to try, because I don't particularly enjoy it, and it certainly doesn't make me the best party guest for the holidays.

Perhaps I should call Etta and find out what she thinks about it. But she'd probably just refer me to her feeling wheel and then tell me to buy myself something nice, which generally seemed to be her approach to mental healing.

See this cat? She shat in three separate places in my car on the way to my parents' house tonight. Now my nose if full of cat crap smell, and my head hurts, and my hands are all itchy from upholstery cleaner.

I must find something more pleasant to be thankful for.

Tuffy love

I am not generally the kind of person who mopes about being "old"-- in fact, I find this behavior irksome in anyone under the age of 67, which is the age I have officially deemed as being the start of actual oldness. But I went to visit my college campus yesterday with my friends Denise and Melinda, and if anything can make you feel old, it's that.

Because it really still feels like I just left college. I still know all the words to the fight song and the alma mater and everything (which I realize is actually more of an old person thing to do, considering a young, cooler person than myself would have forgotten the words to those songs immediately, or, more likely, would never have learned them in the first place). I even remember the combination to my mailbox (so watch your back, box 678).

But I found myself, while checking out the campus, noting with disapproval all the changes that had been made. How dare they build a new gym? The old gym was perfectly fine, except for that one part over the pool that was caving in a little. And as Melinda pointed out, the new education building looks a little Hogwarts-y, which again, I do not condone.

At least my old building, the Arts and Humanities building, remains blockily stolid and antiseptic (the perfect setting for all creative writing workshops!). Of course, I didn't go inside, because my student ID is long gone, and something tells me they might not honor one that was issued in the previous millennium, so the whole building might be reconfigured in there, with rocket jet packs on the chairs and walls made of spun sugar candy.

All in all, even with the weird unsettled feeling of maybe not quite belonging as much as I once did, it was a highly satisfactory trip to good old Ashland University (up on the hill above the town/seen from miles around). And whenever I start to feel bad about my college days receding in the mirror behind me, I can at least console myself with the fact that I am way hotter now.

Dig my tiara and creepy Geisha-esque too-light foundation, yall!

This week in reviews

For some reason, perhaps pity, or perhaps just to shut my whining maw, the fates visited me with loads of free awesomeness-- a friend from work gave me tickets to an advance preview of Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium, and I was able to find both Britney Spears' Blackout AND Kanye West's Graduation at the award-winning Euclid Public Library (gooooo, library!). And so, in an effort to pay it forward, I will provide you all with my reviews of each, something I know you've been waiting for, because no one buys a Britney Spears album without checking with me first.

Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium: This movie got a scathingly horrible review from Entertainment Weekly, which is pretty much the bible by which I live my daily life, but we went anyway, because it was free, and because my arm was sore from Wii-overuse and I needed a break. But actually, I really, really enjoyed this movie a lot-- I thought it was funny, and smart, and it made me cry, which was super embarassing because the aforementioned friend from work is super grossed out by human emotion. I would very much recommend this movie, and not just because I have a weird Arrested Development crush on Jason Bateman (I love your cutie nose freckles, Teen Wolf Too!).

Thumbs down, however, to the crazy woman in the row in front of us who, after buying one of those industrial-sized tubs of popcorn that were designed solely in the off-chance that an actual elephant decided to spend $8.50 to watch In the Valley of Elah, dumped the entire thing into a plastic grocery bag and sent her five-year-old son out to the lobby to get it refilled (because apparently, if you have the tenacity to plow through one of those tubs, they reward you by giving you another tub). She repeated this action no less than three times, all the time smugly and loudly proclaiming how she slipped popcorn's stranglehold on the US economy. She also passed out ten cans of soda to the busload of children she had brought (which I am totally baffled by, because upon entrance to the advance screening, my purse was searched AND I had to walk through a metal detector), and produced a bag of candy as large as Brazil. Way to go, Lady Cheapington! You brought the movie theater snack industry to its knees.

Blackout: Conversely, Blackout got pretty good reviews, which is really the only reason I picked it up, and not because I still secretly enjoy listening to "Hit Me Baby One More Time" and pretending to slam my locker in a coy, come-hither fashion. However, I found this album shockingly unlistenable-- the last third of it might be totally awesome, but I will never know, as I had to turn it off somewhere in the middle of a song called "Get Naked (I Got a Plan)."

Graduation: I ain't saying it's a bad stinker/I'm just saying it's no "Golddigger." (Yes! I am an awesome rapper. Someone bring me some Louis Vuitton clothes now.) My favorite song on it so far is "Can't Tell Me Nothing," but "Stronger" is also fun. I was a bit perplexed by "Drunk and Hot Girls," but see an awesome opportunity for a collabo between he and Spears on "Drunk and Hot Girls Get Naked (I Got a Plan)."

Birdman Speaks

I hope you enjoy this footage of the Birdman, the super fanscot of the Philadelphia Eagles. Please note that I know this guy personally, and that makes me super mega awesome.

Kiim and Benjamiin get a Wii

In what will likely prove to be the stupidest idea ever in terms of ever getting our thank you notes out, Ben and I purchased a Nintendo Wii last night, and I must say, without qualifiers, that it is the coolest video game system ever. So far, I have defeated Ben at Wii Baseball, Wii Golf, Wii Bowling and Wii Shooting Range, thus proving once and for all that, at least on some level, I am good at sports.

The only major side effect has been that my Wii arm is very sore, and tends to pulse with muscle tics. This, after only one night of play, is slightly alarming. Alhtough I must admit that we repeatedly ignored the Wii's warnings that we should probably take a break and relax for a minute (That Wii, always thinking of our well-being!).

I will attempt not to let the Wii curtail my blogging habits, but it's really hard, knowing that every second that passes is a second that I am not working on my Wii backhand for Wii tennis, or further improving me Wii avatar, which looks a lot like me, only with this weird Rastafarian haircut, as apparently the Wii creators do not believe in offering curly hair as a hairstyle option.

WIBD?

Increasingly, I find myself asking the question, "What is Britney Spears doing right now?" I have kind of become obsessed with this-- I think, perhaps, because at work we are forced to watch Fox News during our lunch hour, and Fox News appears to be about 80% dedicated to the comings and goings of Ms. Spears. I generally know what she is wearing each day, what she looks like when she's sobbing uncontrollably, how she changes her hats to fit her moods, and what shapes the acne on her face is making from one day to the next.

But, I wonder, what is Britney doing during the hours of her day that are not covered by Fox News (which, weirdly, seems to have inked a deal with TMZ.com, which seems sort of odd for a news channel whose only other extensive coverage appears to be on Why the President Is Doing a Super Awesome Job!).

I mean, think about it-- it's 9:29 p.m. here in Cleveland right now, and I am wearing a big gray sweater and typing on my blog. That means it is 6:29 p.m. where Britney is (presumably) right now-- and what is she doing? Right now? Is she eating? Is she in some sort of yoga class? Right this minute, is she scratching her ass?

This concept can also be applied to pretty much anyone-- somewhere out in the world right now, the Pope is doing something. My mom is doing something. It's actually kind of mind-boggling, if you think about it-- all around the world, people that you know in real life and in TMZ life are doing things that you're not a part of, that you can only conjecture about.

This is, really, a concept that sometimes tends to overload my synapses, which is why I choose to focus more on the Britney situation.

So, if you had to hazard a guess, what would you think Britney is doing right now? My guess: buying a new hat. With a lollipop in her mouth. Holding a small dog. Without her children.

I'm willing to bet I'm right.

Okay, so clearly I haven't exactly done anything to make this writing group happen yet. I think I was hoping that I would wake up one day and be some sort of writing group starting guru, or that woodland creatures would have just set the whole thing up for me, so I could just log on and look like a hero. Lest I appear to be an Indian-giver of writing group promises, I will get this thing up and running. I just need to overcome some general malaise, which mainly seems to stem from the fact that, now that the wedding is over, I have so much free time that I literally don't know what to do with it, so I do absolutely nothing.

This is not strictly true; Ben was out of town this weekend, so on my first weekend of alone time since long before the wedding, I accomplished the following things:

1. Bought speakers for my laptop, whose own internal speakers had died long ago.

2. Listened to the shitty music I have on my laptop through my new speakers (for instance, right this very second I am listening to the "Strongbad Techno" song from Homestar Runner, and I just got done listening to "P.I.M.P." Oh, and Genesis' "No Son of Mine" just came on, so I'm going to have to skip it so that I don't fall to the ground in a gelatinous goo of total gaywadness).

3. Packed away my summer clothes, so my closet is now capri-free.

4. Thought about writing thank you cards, a little.

5. Watched season 7 of The Simpsons, arguably among the best of the seasons. Actually, I like season 7 of the season better than I like the actual, real-life season of spring. So that's saying a lot.

6. Pretended like I was going to work on my craptastic novel that I've been working on since high school, but didn't fool anyone, so went and watched reruns of I Love New York II.

7. Made the best Chex Mix, like, fucking, ever.

Oh, and, Becki's boyfriend Joe, who just happens to be the Philadelphia Eagles Birdman, was in a promo spot during the third quarter of the Eagles game yesterday, so I watched that about seventeen times. God, I wish he had been at the wedding, so he could have done that squawk.

(Note: I forgot to skip "No Son of Mine," and I just noticed it's still playing. Why do I have this? Of all the Genesis songs I could have, why this one? I wonder if I have that one about the homeless people that was on this same album. God, I was obsessed with this album when I was in the fifth grade. That's why I grew up to be such a lameass.)

So this week, Ben and I are rededicating ourselves to doing post-wedding wrap-up stuff (which is not nearly as much fun as pre-wedding stuff, because I know there's not going to be a big party after I finally buy the stamps for the as-yet-unwritten thank you cards), and then maybe I'll be ready to start the writing group. Those of you who expressed interest, do not despair! I promise it is just over the horizon.

Although it appears I'm going to have to go through and delete some of my mp3s first.

The time is (almost) now

Just in the last couple weeks, I've been feeling compelled to start writing again. Not just blogging writing (becaue as I've proven, my blogging is a bit sub-par of late), but actual writing writing.

This is a big deal-- I know a lot of you out there left the MFA program and your day to day life changed very little. I, on the other hand, left school and immediately proceeded to not write anything for the last three and a half years. Essentially, I figured, I had written a (very short) book, and was now entitled to list my name as "Kim Shable, MFA" on my TV Guide subscription.

I think I was just burned out-- kind of the way a greyhound doesn't really feel the need to run after a few years chasing the rabbit. And I also met a sexy dude, and moved into his house, and so writing took a back burner to being a sexy beast.

But just lately, I've been thinking, "maybe I could write something." I don't even know for sure if I could anymore-- I might have too much insurance knowledge in my head right now to make room for anything made up.

So I was wondering-- if I were to start some sort of informal writing group, would anyone be interested in allying themselves to it? I might have to start slow, with prompts and word limits and the whole deal, so I can ease back into it (if I try to write a novel right now, my brain might get tired and give up and go watch reruns of Just Shoot Me).

Any interest? If not, no big. I can continue with my unchecked TV viewing alllll night.

Power of the Pen

If you could, please take a moment to wish my fabulous cousin Katie good luck on her Power of the Pen try-outs tomorrow-- I will attempt to hide my jealousy that I am no longer the best writer in the family!

For those of you who aren't from 'round these parts (although Power of the Pen might be a national thing? But I don't know, because I got my ass kicked at the state level, so I didn't really progress much beyond that), Power of the Pen is a writing competition open to seventh and eighth graders, in which the writers have a limited amount of time to write a short piece based on a prompt given at the start of the session.

My own Power of the Pen story is a tragic one-- in seventh grade, I was felled the evening before the local round of competition by a vicious stomach flu that left me unable to compete. On a side note, that same night I ate a homemade pizza, and, convinced that it had poisoned me and robbed me of my one chance to finally kick ass at a (admittedly nerdily academic) team "sport," I swore off pizza for the next four years.

In the eighth grade I made it to the aforementioned state level, only to be positively crushed, leaving me embittered. Oh, I still wrote-- most famously, I went on to complete the infamous John Boston novel, quite possibly The Worst Novel Ever Written By Anyone, Ever-- but it wasn't really until college that my urge to use writing as a form of ass-kicking-ness returned.

Based on the story that Katie read me tonight, though, I have no doubts that, if such a thing exists, she will make it to the nationals. And I will ride on her coat tails to glory!

Good luck, Katie!

I've been trying to come up with something interesting to blog about for the past few days-- I promised that, upon my return, I would be a blogging machine, right? But thus far, nothing really of note has occurred. I did get a really bitchin' haircut (only one day after returning from my honeymoon, which prompted my boss to announce that "pretty soon, I would be going on an All-McDonald's Diet and going to sleep in flannel pajamas with a chastity belt underneath," because apparently cutting one's hair is tantamount to Giving Up Entirely), but hesitate to comment on it further until I can get a decent picture of it to share with you.

But other than the new 'do, there just hasn't been much happening. Or maybe there has, but because the wedding was such a gigantic event, it makes all other events in my life seem insanely small and lame? Possibly.

Either way, I'm beginning to worry that I have become boring. What's worse, I fear that I may have been boring for some time now, but had the crutch of Discussing the Wedding to fall back on.

I guess it's kind of like when you go on an amazing vacation, and take tons of pictures, but as soon as you return and people start asking you about the trip, you can't think of anything to say, other than, "it was really, really fun." Also: "We went putt-putt golfing," because you always go putt-putt golfing on vacation. We would have gone in Mexico, but such a thing did not seem to exist there. Which is silly, since the whole thing could have been Mayan-themed, which would have been awesome.

Anyway, I'm hoping to get my Person of Interest Mojo back shortly. Actually, I just thought of something way better to blog about than what I just wrote, but I think I'll save it for tomorrow-- I can't blow all my interestingness at once.

Will post more as soon as...

1. Office where computer is kept is reverted back to its normal state, away from its current state of Giant Messy Wedding Present Holding Pen

2. I get tired of my new shredder, or run out of things to shred

3. I work up the nerve to call my very nice but still somewhat intimidating photographer to find out how, exactly, we go about building our album

4. I find a way to re-enter society as Kim Oja, Married Girl, rather than Kim Shable, wedding-obsessed engaged girl who can talk about nothing other than her wedding

Until then, please enjoy this picture of Mexico, and please, don't be shy about goading me into posting, as I will likely recline in my living room under my souvenir Mexican blanket watching reruns of "The First 48" until the end of time.

PS: This picture was taken at Xel-Ha, which is where they filmed the movie Blue Lagoon, which means that I have gone swimming in the same water as Brooke Shields. I find that sort of gross.

Things I learned in Mexico

1. If the Atlanta airport loses your luggage, as they so often do, do not panic. Luckily for us all, Wal-Mart has penetrated even the most beautiful of locations. Once there, you will find an excellent Mexican Wal-Mart swimsuit, some perfectly serviceable Mexican Wal-Mart toiletries, and a most excellent Mexican Wal-Mart skort. Upon your return from Mexican Wal-Mart, your luggage will arrive.

2. It is helpful if you try to learn at least some phrases in Spanish before traveling to Mexico. For instance:

What time is it?

Where are we?

What is this I'm eating?

All those would have been helpful phrases for me to learn. However, my Sesame Street Spanish of Ola!, Gracias, Agua and Por Favor got me much farther than I would have anticipated.

3. For your information, the letter X is pronounced as a SH sound in the Mayan language. I tell you this so that you can avoid the embarassment that followed me pronouncing Xcaret and Xel-Ha as Excarrot and Excelha.

4. The Mayans still exist today, which I totally did not know, having assumed that, like the Aztecs, they were largely wiped out. Not so! In fact, they still comprise a large portion of the population in the Riviera Maya, where we stayed; over 10% of the population of Mexico is Mayan, and does not speak Spanish. (There is no joke in this one; I just found it extremely interesting.) On a side note, though, Mayan tour guides do enjoy making perhaps too many human sacrifice jokes.

5. They do not have squirrels in Mexico, but rather iguanas, wild pigs, feral cats, and some animal that we couldn't actually identify, but insisted on calling a Badgerito, which I'm sure is highly offensive, but which we found unendingly funny. They also have this weird half midget-deer, half-gopher thing that was weirdly ominous.

6. The movie Blue Lagoon was filmed in the previously mentioned Xel-ha; however, do not hold that against it, as it is probably the most beautiful place I've ever seen. Also, it has several all-you-can-eat buffets, which is definitely a bonus.

7. In all, Mexico-- specifically the Riviera Maya-- is about the greatest, most romantic place you can ever go for your honeymoon; its only real downfall is that it is, in fact, so spectacular that it makes the prospect of going to work tomorrow make me throw up a little in my mouth.

Pictures to follow tomorrow as soon as Blogger ceases its broken-ness!