Friend and coworker Bex just told me she had a dream in which I beat Jessica Simpson in a company-wide poetry slam contest.
I'm not sure why, but it made me feel very good about myself. Not at all like the three-too-many pieces of tempura I had for lunch.
Oh, owie, owie, ow.
Nooooooo!
I have just learned that I may be allergic to wine. So much for the V. Sattui membership. I woke up this morning with a rash on my face that looks kinda like sun poisoning (impossible because a. I wear sunscreen compulsively and b. it's been overcast all week), so naturally, I did what any lazy hypochondriac does: I looked it up on the Internet. I had noticed that my asthma was worse after drinking wine, but I thought that it was related more to talking and laughing (which tends to accompany wine). Alas, no. The sulfites and histamines, particularly in red wine, apparently cause rashes and bring on asthma attacks.
Why can't I be allergic to Jell-O or crocodile teeth? Why vino? Why?!
Less traumatically, but still food-related, I won a solitary game of Pepperidge Farm Chessmen last week. Those bastards crumbled under the sheer force of my will...and my molars.
Aw, man. I suck ass at blogging lately.
It could be that every day, I wake up, take a shower, get dressed, go to work, come home, eat, go to bed, wake up and start the whole whirlwind that is my life all over again (except on weekends, when there is brunch). And who wants to read about that? Plus, Eric's out of town and I'm lonely and eating poorly.
I did do something rash last night, however: I bought a new car. Okay, not a new car, exactly, but a car that's new to me. It's a 2000 VW Golf, which just goes to show you that Volkswagen's branding strategy has successfully sucked me in (using ELO and Nick Drake songs in your commercials is NOT playing fair), tumbled me around for a good long while and then spit me out into the luxurious velour driver's seat of my 1.8 liter turbo baby. It's silver and it has a moon roof (Though I'm still not clear on the difference between a sunroof and a moon roof. It must be the Nick Drake.) and I don't have to pull a muscle reaching over to roll down the passenger-side window when I want some crossdraft action. Oh no, my friends. I have power windows now. Oh! And keyless entry with one of those rad VW switchblade keys.
I also have a six-disc CD changer, which is conveniently located in the trunk. Now please don't interpret what I'm about to say as a complaint against my new toy/monthly financial drain, but seriously people, what the fuck? We can shoot guys into space, but until the 2003 model year, nobody could figure out how to put a six-disc CD changer in the actual cabin of a vehicle?
Anyway, after years of waffling about whether I wanted to drive the ol' Subaru until its wheels flew off or bite the bullet and take on a car payment again, I feel pretty happy. I didn't submit to the temptation of buying a brand-new, rapidly depreciating car; I have a very reasonable monthly payment that, if I can keep my motivation up, I should be able to double, thereby paying off my car in half the required time and, dude, I have a totally sweet little ride.
One issue, though. Is my car a boy or a girl? My inclination is to pay homage to my maritime heritage and call it "she." But there's something sickly satisfying about calling it "he," sorta like "say my name, bitch!"
I think I'll just stick with tradition and call it "my car."
I'm working on a version of "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off" that goes "You say caesura, I say lacuna..."
Okay, they're not quite synonyms, but they sound good together, like capers and lox or Gilbert and Sullivan.
Things I Did in New York
1. Jumped on a trampoline for hours with my five-year-old nephew. Here's a tip: Jump on a trampoline for hours, then get off the trampoline and try to jump just ONCE on solid ground. It's profoundly disturbing, like that thing where you stretch your arms out, palms in, against a doorframe for 30 seconds and then step away from the doorframe and your arms fly up in the air on their own.
2. Ate meat. A lot of it. With reckless abandon.
3. Drove to Massachusetts. See, I always wanted to go to Walden Pond. So we did. It was rainy and I caught a cold. But man, did I live deliberately. I also learned from my stepmother about this series of books for kids. They're really great little books featuring a bear named Henry (as in David Thoreau) and his adventures hiking to Fitchburg and building a cabin and generally gettin' his big hairy butt in touch with nature. Nowhere in them does he shit in the woods, however.
4. Had tea. You can never have too much tea, especially of the capital-T variety that comes with scones and fresh berries with cream. I should mention that Concord, Massachusetts, where we had said tea, is just the sweetest little town full of rich white people I have ever seen! You simply must go. Seriously, though, that place puts the "id" in "idyll."
You can find more of the interesting word usements I structure on Apple.com.
Read my article, Better Writing Through Design, on No. 242 of A List Apart.