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?