holy moly it's been a year!

remember when i was kind of addicted to my blog? why would i ignore it for a year? oh, wait, nvm. i think it might have something to do with facebook. facebook is very demanding. but i am lonely for Second Impression. so i think i will try to come back and blather on randomly about things that only i care about. maybe i'll even start a new blog. with a more precise focus. or maybe not, because i have no idea what that would be. anyway, nothing much to say today. i have to take a nap. but i am going to come back to the SI. Second Impression, not Self Injury. Duh.

this beautiful martini is making me nostalgic-- and wishful

i wish:

i could see my friend Karol.
i could go to NYC.
Alicia and i could have more time together.
i knew how to be helpful to my friends who are sad.
i could buy a pogo ball.
i had gone to medical school.
i could go back to school whenever i want to.
i could see Sara.
i had discipline.

stolen from sara and carm

i think lists are fantastic. statistics, i hate. they mean nothing to me. and i always assume they are false or skewed or just big fat lies. but lists. i love a list. sara and carm have the following list on their blogs and i thought i should probably have it too. why wouldn't i? let's see which of these very significant activities i have performed:

1. Started your own blog
2. Slept under the stars
3. Played in a band
4. Visited Hawaii
5. Watched a meteor shower
6. Given more than you can afford to charity
7. Been to Disneyland
8. Climbed a mountain
9. Held a praying mantis
10. Sang a solo
11. Bungee jumped
12. Visited Paris
13. Watched a lightning storm at sea
14. Taught yourself an art from scratch
15. Adopted a child
16. Had food poisoning
17. Walked to the top of the Statue of Liberty...or as far as they let you go.
18. Grown your own vegetables
19. Seen the Mona Lisa in France
20. Slept on an overnight train
21. Had a pillow fight
22. Hitch hiked
23. Taken a sick day when you’re not ill
24. Built a snow fort
25. Held a lamb
26. Gone skinny dipping
27. Run a Marathon
28. Ridden in a gondola in Venice
29. Seen a total eclipse
30. Watched a sunrise or sunset
31. Hit a home run
32. Been on a cruise
33. Seen Niagara Falls in person
34. Visited the birthplace of your ancestors
35. Seen an Amish community
36. Taught yourself a new language
37. Had enough money to be truly satisfied
38. Seen the Leaning Tower of Pisa in person
39. Gone rock climbing
40. Seen Michelangelo's David
41. Sung karaoke
42. Seen Old Faithful geyser erupt
43. Bought a stranger a meal at a restaurant
44. Visited Africa
45. Walked on a beach by moonlight
46. Been transported in an ambulance
47. Had your portrait painted
48. Gone deep sea fishing
49. Seen the Sistine Chapel in person
50. Been to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris
51. Gone scuba diving or snorkeling
52. Kissed in the rain
53. Played in the mud
54. Gone to a drive-in theater
55. Been in a movie
56. Visited the Great Wall of China
57. Started a business
58. Taken a martial arts class
59. Visited Russia
60. Served at a soup kitchen
61. Sold Girl Scout Cookies
62. Gone whale watching
63. Got flowers for no reason
64. Donated blood, platelets or plasma
65. Gone sky diving
66. Visited a Nazi Concentration Camp
67. Bounced a check
68. Flown in a helicopter
69. Saved a favorite childhood toy
70. Visited the Lincoln Memorial
71. Eaten Caviar
72. Pieced a quilt
73. Stood in Times Square
74. Toured the Everglades
75. Been fired from a job
76. Seen the Changing of the Guards in London
77. Broken a bone
78. Been on a speeding motorcycle
79. Seen the Grand Canyon in person
80. Published a book
81. Visited the Vatican
82. Bought a brand new car
83. Walked in Jerusalem
84. Had your picture in the newspaper
85. Read the entire Bible
86. Visited the White House
87. Killed and prepared an animal for eating
88. Had chickenpox
89. Saved someone’s life
90. Sat on a jury
91. Met someone famous
92. Joined a book club
93. Lost a loved one
94. Had a baby
95. Seen the Alamo in person
96. Swam in the Great Salt Lake
97. Been involved in a law suit
98. Owned a cell phone
99. Been stung by a bee
100. Read an entire book in one day
and there we have it. a highlighted list of the things i have done that someone deems interesting. i definitely need to get out of the country more. but few of these european tourist attractions interest me. perhaps i'll make a new list with places i want to go.

nessie

well i am still wide awake, so i guess i'll just keep contributing to my various blogs. i can do that. they are my blogs. duh.

i have an iGoogle gadget called "Today's Reason To Drink". i think that's funny. and it is funny. and if you don't think it's funny i don't really care because, as we have already established, this is my blog. anyway, august 22 is my brother's birthday. i'll drink to that. but it is also, as iGoogle informs me, the anniversary of the first sighting of the Loch Ness monster. in-- get this-- 565. that's like over 1400 years ago! that's a time that i associate with, well.... nothing, really. i don't even think about the 500's. nothing cool was happening yet. the reformation wasn't coming for like 1000 more years and i am a protestant theologian. why would i know anything about this time in history? ok, that's a bit facetious, but only a bit. and honestly, if someone had told me to guess when the first sighting of the elusive "nessie" occurred, i am fairly certain i would have said something like, "i dunno, like the 1800's or something? how the fuck would i know?" that's how i talk when i know nothing. it might be how i talk all the time. not sure, exactly. but anyway, back to my "point", if there is one. people have been spotting this evasive little beast for that long!?!?!

shouldn't it be dead by now?

chirp chirp

it's not the middle of the night yet, but i can feel it from here. i was trying to finish a bottle of heineken and drift off to sleep, but there is a cricket somewhere very near a door or window to my house and it seems to be performing a filibuster of sorts. so here i am. a nudge away from the middle of the night and wide fucking awake. guess i'll fill you in on my life these days...

i finally, after all this time, post-thesis completion, decided it was time to get a real job and someone actually gave me one. i start my new role as a drug/alcohol counselor/educator in one week. thank god. while the dreadful days of serving coffee tended to give me something to write (bitch) about from time to time, my love for it has long since been on the wane. and the bar... well, how long can one really do that as a (nearly) sole means of income. respect and empathy to those who do it for years and years... i can't do it. anyway... i am very very excited about this new position. it is exactly what i love to do and the only thing i can imagine myself doing since teaching is not yet an option. i am just so delighted by the idea of a real paycheck again, never mind the fact that i will be doing something i love and am fairly good at.

ok... what else? i have recently taken up golf as a new addiction. hobby. whatever. i bought myself a set of clubs for my birthday; mostly because alicia loves to golf and i had never really pursued it as a potential recreational pasttime. i bought the clubs partly because they were pink and partly because i told alicia 7 months ago that i wanted her to teach me to golf. well, she has taught me to golf and the damn game might send me into deep deep debt. costly little game, it is. but i absolutely love it. and alicia and our golfing friends say i am really good at it. i think they just want to make sure i keep playing. but i choose to believe them.

well, i am boring myself to tears with this, so i think i'll stop now. soon something really annoying or funny is going to happen to me, and i will return to tell that story. but for now i am going to try to get sleepy. someone is going to have to silence that damn cricket.

ozzzz-bust

i can't precisely re-trace the steps, but somehow in my internet perusing today, i came upon some stories about a sting operation last october, masterminded by our fine sheriff of cass county, Paul Laney. how i could possibly have not known about this before today, evades me completely. i tend to be an informed citizen. i try to know what's going on around me. granted, i don't usually use our local news sources as a means of this information gathering, but this particular story has like 12 pages of google hits. rolling stone knew about it. one would think that just by being present in this town and leaving my home at least once a day, i would have encountered this bizarre story. in the tanning bed, where i am forced to listen to commercial radio, if nowhere else. but i didn't. and now that i know, i have questions.

the story goes something like this:

in an effort to attract a number of crims with active warrants, sheriff laney took advantage of an up-coming ozzy osbourne concert, not to mention some stereotypes and presumptions, and hosted a fake VIP pre-party. apparently personal invitations to the party were sent to said fugitives. here is where all my questions come in. news stories differ... some say 500 invitations were sent. some say 40. all indicate that between 30 and 40 arrests were made on the spot. i want to know if, assuming the VIP list was 500, were all 500 of them alleged criminals? was there a buffer group of random invitations? did laney do some research and find that, in fact, this group of rule-breakers really liked ozzy osbourne? or did he assume that there would be a reliable enough correlation between the formerly "sinister" rocker (turned pathetic fried-brain tv dad) and the unlawful element? it's hard to tell by the inconsistent numbers. if 40 personal invitations went out and 30 arrests were made, then one might interpret this as a successful, if misguided, adventure. if 500 invitations went out and 30 arrests were made, then one must assume that felons are listening to someone else these days. and as one blogger hinted, the biggest issue raised might just be, why do so few people want to drink free booze with the prince of fucking darkness?

additionally, wouldn't it have been extremely odd to have randomly received an invitation to a party that no one else knew about and hadn't been advertised anywhere except in the mailboxes of you and your equally not-so-law-abiding friends?

i have so many questions. i don't think i am done with this story. any info, posted as a comment, would be greatly appreciated.

degree in hand

today i walked across a stage, shook hands with some people, and received a lovely red folder with a diploma inside. after all that time... so much shame, so much self-loathing. i have completed and received my degree from union seminary. and as a special bonus, i have spent 4 fantastic days wandering the city i love so much. grace happens. miracles occur.

photos are definitely forthcoming.

commencement

i guess i am going to new york. i thought i had let go of my little commencement stage fantasy, but apparenty not. i booked a flight ($220.50 out of minneapolis) for may 13 and i am going to spend 5 nostalgic days, wandering the streets of manhattan, reminiscing the fine days of a life supported exclusively by financial aid and big ugly loans, wondering why the hell i don't still live there and why the hell i don't still support myself with big fat loan checks.

perfect girlfriend. lovely new home. successful completion of degree. impromptu trip to NY.

how great is my life?

moving

i'm packing and moving. for a long time i was reading and writing. then i was working and paying. then i was reading and writing again. now i am packing and moving. again. everyone hates moving and if you say you don't then you are either a big fat liar or i don't think i can relate to you in a friendly kind of way. packing sucks ass. there are only a handful of good things that can possibly come of it. and i am talking about a toddler's hand... not a grown-up hand. one good thing is that it's a great opportunity to get rid of a lot of shit you definitely don't need. in a break-up move, you can simply leave some of it behind. by accident, of course. but in a total move, complete with tub-scrubbing and carpet cleaning, you have to do something with all of your shit. and if you don't want to take it with you... it's dumpster time.

the other good thing about packing to move is that you have to reach waaaaaay to the back of your closets where you put the stuff that has no practical use but gets "stored" everywhere you live because you have to keep it. i have a lot of crap in the "have to keep it" category. and the only time i ever "use" anything in this category is when i am moving and i find it again. then i make whomever is present suffer through a saunter down memory lane. "... and here is the water bottle that my entire volleyball team signed when my team went 33-0 in my junior year... and this is my mom's majorette uniform... and here is the picture of my grandfather that hung on the wall in my parents' house while i was growing up..." they love it.

the miserable thing about the storage crap is that if it truly must be saved, it tends to get passed along. like the giant plastic bag full of unopened panty hose i found in my closet tonight. there are no less than 24 packages, still sealed, of control top panty hose in a wide array of hues. these were an acquisition. they can't just be thrown away because they are new, but my mom retired and moved out of her house. she moved into a life with no need for panty hose of any kind and a home with significantly less storage space. so as she was cleaning out her dresser drawers and happened upon a stack of unused hose, she thought it best that they be passed along to a more suitable home. i guess she determined that mine was the appropriate home for said hosiery.

i have not worn hose of any kind since high school. that would be 15 years ago. and anything with a "control top" can go straight to hell as far as i am concerned. and yet, i have 24 pairs of these elastic nightmares in my possession at all times. i own them. they are, i suppose, insured along with all the other shit i own, intentionally or not.

why can't i just throw them away? but more importantly, why the hell did she have so god damn many of these ass traps? please help me. how many times can i really move them before it starts to meet some kind of criterion in the dsm-iv? i swear, i do not have hoarding behaviors. i never have. i keep sentimental objects and that is normal. but this.... i don't know what to do about this. she left them in my custody, assuming they would be safe and put to good use. anyone want some girdlehose?

grey's

i'm addicted. once again. to television on dvd.

i hate television that comes flying through the air and lands on top of my house or comes zipping through wires that come out of my walls. i hate it for a million reasons that really don't matter. but i love television on dvd. i love that i can watch only television shows that i really enjoy, that don't irritate me, that are not interrupted by annoying commercials. i love that i don't have to wait a week and try to remember what happened last. i hate doing that. i hate waiting. i won't wait. i won't even watch a show until it is at least two years old. then if i should decide that i love it, i can watch the whole damn thing. in one afternoon in some cases.

that is what happened with grey's anatomy. i got sick in january and had to stay on the couch in jammies. alicia and i bought the first season of grey's anatomy on dvd. we didn't get off the couch until the whole season was over. then, since i was sick for most of the next two months, i also bought season two. didn't take long to burn through that either. in fact, the addictive behavior surrounding this particular show caused me to initiate some rules. well, one rule. i wasn't allowed to buy season three until my master's thesis was finished.

i bought it three hours after i printed the damn paper. i am a junkie. but it's just so damn funny. so funny that i forgive it for being so fucking sad sometimes.

there's more!

when i wrote yesterday's post, i mentioned that there were a lot of new and great things happening. then i got so into the whole thesis-finally-finished-after-six-years thing that i forgot to mention the rest.

for the last couple of months alicia and i and my dog and her two dogs have been living in my apartment. generally speaking, this is the best thing that has happened to me in, well, maybe ever. i love her and i love having our whole family in one place. what i don't love is the fucking monster-beast-dog who lives above us and his foot-stomping mother. i already hated them, and peanut was already afraid of them, but the ungodly noise level from above is really only the beginning. now that the three little doggies live together, there is some kind of competition going on to see who can bark the most and howl the loudest at the big dog upstairs. the same competition stands for voices outside the door, people passing by the windows, car doors slamming, and our keys in the door. i love my apartment. alicia loves my apartment. but folks, it is time to fucking move on!!

so we are moving to a house. a friend of ours is renting her house before she sells it and she agreed to rent it to us so we no longer have to live with neighbor noise and cramped spaces. we will have wonderful luxuries like a double car garage and a washer and dryer. no more saving quarters! we must be living right.

just for fun, before i move out of my beloved apartment, i think i'll post a few obligatory photos of the space that made my life normal for the last two years.

class of 2008

it's rare that i use this blog to share the significant details of my life. it is more of an anonymous rant space for me than an actual day by day commentary on life in my little world. but today i am so delighted about current events in my universe, i just want to share them all.

in the interest of full disclosure, let me take you back to march-ish of the year 2000. i was about to graduate from college and had been considering graduate schools since the previous fall. being only minimally motivated, as i tend to be, i had decided that i only really wanted one school. i wanted to attend union theological seminary in the city of new york and if i couldn't do that.... well, i would decide on an alternative route should i need to. sometime in march of 2000, i received word from union seminary that if i should so choose, they were willing to allow me to attend their school. fools! i was ecstatic! the only graduate school i wanted... a fairly competitive school by academic standards... and they were willing to take me. i sent the matriculation card to the registrar before the ink was dry and then kind of panicked. i was going to move to new york city. i had never been, but always wanted to go. i was going to attend the school which housed all of my academic heroes. surely they would think i was an idiot. it was an experiment in baby steps to actually get my confidence-challenged self to union.

i can't possibly be a student at union seminary!!! but i can pack all the shit in my house into boxes. and i can put address labels on those boxes, bearing my new address at west 122nd street. and i can book a plane ticket to new york.... by august of that year i was enrolled, living at 600 west 122nd street, and fully ready to explore the greatest city in the US. i even went to class and did reasonably well.

for reasons known and unknown, in and outside of my control, i completed the coursework at union seminary by december of 2002 and moved all my belongings back to the midwest in a pull-behind u-haul. then life just kind of got in the way of finishing the degree that at one time was more important to me than anything i had ever done.

2003 came and went, i still spoke of finishing. was still working out a precise thesis topic.

2004 came and went, i avoided conversations about my educational history.

2005-- i had lost the ability to discuss ever having lived in NYC-- too ashamed of the unfinished degree.

2006-- i had almost forgotten that i ever went to grad school, i didn't know how to talk about the academic pursuits that used to dominate my conversations... i couldn't say the words 'union theological seminary'.

2007-- a chance meeting between a very dear friend and a Union faculty member, also a dear friend, in Atlanta, GA started the conversation again. one of them emailed me. the other asked me over a post-basketball game drink 'what are you going to do about this master's degree?' a third acquaintance (who happens to have attended Union) got involved in the conversation and pushed me to do something about the unresolved internal conflict this whole issue was causing me.

i contacted union and learned that my option for completion had expired in 2004.

no one was satisfied with this answer and encouraged me to assert myself in ways i never had before. i contacted the dean... series of emails, letters, faxes... they agreed to allow me to enroll and complete the thesis requirement. grace.

that was last june. months went by as i contemplated thesis topics, ideas, directions.... i bumbled around aimlessly, worried that i would bail on the whole project again...

yesterday at 4:26 pm i finished my master's thesis. i brought it to kinko's to be bound and at 12:30 this afternoon i will mail it to the registrar at union theological seminary and on may 16, 2008, i will receive my MA degree, probably in absentia, but i will receive it nonetheless.

it was a long and kind of embarrassing journey, but i haven't been this excited since the day i received the acceptance letter.

life is good.

eBayzondotoneclickshoporama

i would just like to state for the record that i probably should not be allowed to play on eBay.

i go to the grocery store and if the list of grocery needs is longer than three, i can't remember unless i write it down. i get on eBay and i suddenly remember everything i have ever wanted in my life for as long as i have had conscious memory. i am searching for poetry books i didn't even know existed, LP's that i want- just to have, not to play- i don't even have a turntable, but i bought an LP last week. i am currently receiving a shipment from either eBay or Amazon.com almost every day. i have my LP, 4 books, a few dvd's... i am currently waiting for two more books... and i have a bid on a rothko print that would look so perfect in my living room.

i am a total bibliojunkie and i can't resist a book that seems interesting if someone wants to send it to me for ten dollars. unfortunately the two books that i want more than any others right now are still listing for approximately 235 dollars on all possible internet sources. damn it. oh well, maybe i will go back to eBay and find myself a nice beaded headpiece of some kind. just to have, not to wear. that will ease my sadness.

just so tired

today i am extremely tired and still a little bit sickly. i can't sleep at night so i sort of stumble through the day on autopilot, resting as best i can while still standing and talking. i am frustrated with this situation and thus, might be just a little bit crabby. when i am a little bit crabby, i tend to be a little bit negative. this is just a warning: a crabby, cold, sick, sleep-deprived girl is writing this. that said, this seems like a good day to offer a list of the things that i am just so fucking tired of...

1. i am tired of subzero temperatures.
2. i am tired of people asking me if i am "cold enough".
3. i am tired of working all the time.
4. i am tired of making "skinny" sugarfree vanilla lattes.
5. i am tired of small talk.
6. i am tired of pretending not to be offended.
7. i am tired of being asked if i am married.
8. i am tired of never talking about the things that matter to me.
9. i am tired of living in a town where a monster truck show is front page news.
10. i am tired of waiting.

let's do some more...

how many explanations can we come up with for this!? is it "have your picture taken with your favorite girl" day at the speakeasy brothel? norman, in the back, is cool. he's an old-timer, he's not ashamed. warren wants to be wanda's numero uno. and he's not afraid to cut a few people if he has to. rick is undercover and sure that photos with whores are not allowed. should have ducked, rick.



oh my god i wore that striped silk shirt in some of my senior photos. i can prove it! not that i should really want to. but i can. i had long since given up the baby mullet though. i think grade five was the one and only year of the mull. a fact i can also prove with a school photo. but it is likely that i won't.

by the way, does the other guy's head actually flair out above his ears? is that normal?

ummm....??

i got a bulk/forward email today. i have fairly high standards for this kind of thing and i always make sure that it will be worthwhile to spend my time looking at it before i open it. i checked, it was. but one must seek some kind of confirmation that the "hilarious" or "Unbelievable!!" email is actually hilarious or difficult to believe. sometimes one gets duped by opening some bullshit with an asymmetrical angel crafted out of type-symbols that are usually reserved for pretend swearing. granted, the angel is there to bring luck in love and fortune, but i remain a skeptic and i would really prefer to NOT scroll for 4 minutes in order to find the misguided blessing.



today's message did not disappoint. it was a collection of actual family portraits from olan mills. i don't know how the author acquired said photos, but i don' t care. they were damn funny. and came complete with commentary. a few in particular caused some curiosity for me...

what the fuck kind of weirdness is this? i really need an explanation. so if the aging backstreet boy or young powder is out there somewhere, please come along and tell us what the fuck you were thinking. of course, in the meantime, i can spend a great deal of time inventing explanations for this freakshow. they would be fascinating, i am sure. and they would be exceedingly disturbing. so, for now, i am just going to assume that this photo was taken because one of the two chaps in this pose lost a bet of some kind. but why punish the girl?

additionally... all of the olan mills portraits i had to pose for were snapped in the small stuffy multi-use room at my childhood church. i would be eternally delighted if this were a family portrait for church.

news

someone at the coffee house reads a magazine called "in touch". it was left in the kitchen last weekend and when i arrived on monday morning, i opened it to see just what this little publication was all about. apparently there is a whole genre of these weekly rags. they are called "gossip magazines". i knew nothing of this world, except that it is fairly common among people whose lives i don't understand to want to know what britney spears or angelina jolie did yesterday. for the life of me i cannot and never want to understand what that desire is about. but i am fascinated by the subculture of people who live for this shit. so i opened the magazine and read a few "articles"-- if we dare play so fast and loose with that term.

i learned that britney spears is preggers. as far as i can tell, this should only matter to britney, her family and maybe the social worker that she should have monitoring her life. however, my reaction to this news was dramatically different from that of-- well, of i'm not sure whom.... other people, i guess. here is how the article begins: "it was the news that shocked the world. last week In Touch exclusively revealed that Britney Spears is pregnant again." now, folks, i am a member of the world of which this author (whose identity i could not seem to locate on the page) speaks. now, i grant that i was not actually present or aware "last week" when this mind-blowing news was released on the unsuspecting public, so maybe i missed the moment and thus, my opportunity to be "shocked". but i have to look at the situation realistically, and i really believe that regardless of when or how i would have been informed, this news is not and would not have been shocking to me. with the exception of worrying about the potential shithole life this fetus might one day have, i don't give one good god damn about the fact that "Brit" as the mags call her, is pregnant. but in fairness, i should report to my faithful reader, that should you be interested in this situation, you can open to page 36 of this week's edition and see photos of actual text messages allegedly sent by the alleged father of said alleged fetus. have fun with that.

also, if you are dying to be told who looks better in which dress and with which haircut, this information is also available to you in "in Touch". i think i prefer to remain out of touch for the time being. even trying to read those articles as a sociological inquiry made me feel sick to my stomach. and made me even more embarrassed to be a US american. that might be the only thing "in touch" magazine has in common with NPR, in my life at least. whether i am learning of paris hilton's make-out history or listening to the Republican debates, i am embarrassed to be a part of this.

excuse me, sir, you have eggs in your pocket

i routinely tell myself that i am going to stop using this blog exclusively to tell dumb stories about the weird people at the coffee house, but they just keep coming. there is nothing i can do about this. i can't laugh in their faces (usually) so i have to do something.

today a man walked up to the counter and ordered his decaf brewed coffee. like he does every day. then he made exhausted, anguished sounds with this voice and breath. like he does every day. then he said something about having to wake up. also every day. i have not yet informed him that the decaf coffee might not help because it doesn't seem like my business.

at some point during the search for cash in his pockets, mr. decaf tapped the outside of his jacket pocket and said, puzzled, "what's this?" i didn't know because i was not inside his pocket at the time. i shrugged, indicating that i was unsure of the answer to his question and unsure of who he was really talking to. then mr. decaf reached into said pocket and pulled out a breakfast sandwich in a bright yellow waxy paper wrapper.

i can only hope that the sandwich had been there for a very brief period of time. how can someone possibly have such a thing in their pocket and not know it? that's warm eggs and meat. in a pocket. a jacket pocket. how could he actually be wondering "what's this?" how often does he just happen upon a breakfast sandwich in his pocket? does he do the same with lunch?

he ate it. he didn't know it was there, found it, ate it.

i think i might try this in public, just to see if the response i get from other normal people is similar to my own response to mr. Egg McPocket. i am going to go to Barnes and Noble, and while i am getting ready to check out, i'll reach into my pocket, say "what's this?", and pull out a taco. it has to be as weird as i think it is.

that's a lot of curly-swirlies

today i had to google "cursive alphabet". of course i am a little embarrassed about this, but i tend to have a profound need to confess things that embarrass me. i was standing behind the counter at the coffee house, holding a dry erase marker when a thought passed through: "i wonder if i remember how to make all of the letters of the english alphabet in upper case cursive." some of them are kind of weird, (hello, capital Q) so i wasn't sure i remembered all of them. as humiliating as it is to have to say it, i did not remember. and as soon as i saw the graphics (on an education site designed to teach 8-year-olds) i discovered that i might not even be capable of making those shapes. i am going to try again, but it's not looking good so far. before my google search, it was the H and the Q that eluded me. then i did the search and realized that my X and F were both wrong. there are so many swirlies on these stupid letters. looks kind of dumb, really. that's probably why real people don't actually follow the rules of proper penpersonship.

dirty

every day something happens in this coffee house that causes me to wonder.... i wonder things like:


is this dude serious?

is this lady an idiot?

am i on candid camera?

would i ever behave in this way?

is this as funny as it seems to me?



today does not disappoint.



a man came in a few minutes ago and said to me as he waited in line, "i am going to give you a lot of pennies today, for a tip." ok.




when it was his turn at bat, he asked about the house blend. i don't know why he bothered because we both knew he was going to order it regardless of what i said about it. this he confirmed for me by not listening to my description at all and just ordering it anyway. i poured the man's coffee and when i brought it back to the counter, he dumped a pound and a half of pennies, nickels and dimes out of the cup holder liner from his van. after a momentary hesitation and glance at his mound o' change, he looked up at me and said, "actually, i am kind of in a hurry. whatever is left is yours." and he slid the whole pile across the counter toward me.



here is what i know about change that collects in large sums, especially in cars: as a collective unit, it acquires myriad life substances, most of which i don't want to touch. i looked at my new-found wealth and all i could think of was the fact that this pile of metal is full of pocket lint and pet hair and hand sweat and dead skin and sneezes and hair oils and countless life remnants that i wouldn't even want to fathom. touching all of it in order to count out 190 of his dirty little pennies was so not on my agenda for the day. i promptly pushed the collection into a paper cup which would become my new change collection and paid for his coffee with dollars from the tip jar. i think i'll let the change counter at the bank deal with the chewing gum shrapnel and pubic hair. machines don't mind that kind of thing.