Why???

I don’t have time to write much tonight, I’m exhausted, over-worked and underslept. (I’m a published writer, so yes, “underslept” is a word, thank you.)

But I do need to share with the fact that I saw yet ANOTHER sign that the world is coming to an end.

I was driving down the street today (as opposed to the days when I drive on the sidewalk) and I looked up to see that there was a new restaurant being built. I looked at the name, then I looked away and then I looked at the name again. Because it just ain’t every day that you see “Tex Wasabi” as a name of a restaurant. I kid you friggin’ not.

What are people doing? Or I guess the better question is, what are they trying to do? Why, why, why do we need a restaurant that combines the culinary cuisines of both BBQ ribs and raw fish eggs? I really don’t get it. Oh and if we are going to combine the cuisine let’s go ahead and combine the logos too:



Sweet Mary. It’s a cowboy riding a ridiculously large fish. Or it’s a ridiculously small cowboy riding a fish. One or the other, but both ridiculous. In order to truly appreciate this logo you simply must go to the website. Please go check it out so you will have a chance to see for yourself the beginning of the end of any hope of class we as a society had left.

http://www.texwasabis.com/

When this restaurant opens I’m so going, and I’m so taking pictures for you. It’s not everyday you have a mechanical bull and sake bombs in the same establishment... Man it’s gonna be good.

My Book

Shhhh. Don’t tell anyone, but my editor told me today that I am officially done writing the book. Halle-friggin’-lujah. She then said that I can now focus on my marketing and publicity. Which means I can now officially become famous, because I’ve finished all that prep work. I might want to get a make-over too, if I’m really serious about the fame thing.

You will notice the cover of the book to the right hand side of the blog. I’m sorry, but I have to start pimping this damn book to whoever is buying. And try to convince others that they should buy. This is my least favorite thing to do. I’m not so good at sales. I can make you something worth selling, but I’d prefer if someone else would sell it, thank you very much.

But while I do have other people trying to sell the book I must also try to do a little pimping myself. I will say that I am proud of the book and I think it’s pretty good for people looking to train for a marathon. I apologize in advance for the name. I wrote everything IN the book, not so much anything on the OUTSIDE of the book. The name of the book is “The NonRunner’s Marathon Guide for Women”. Just rolls off the tongue, does it not? It does not. The real name is supposed to be “From Recliner to Race Day”, but in a moment of weakness I agreed that we could change it. I’ve been told that the new title will get the book to more people. We shall see. Hopefully it will inspire the nation to take up marathon running. And more than that I hope it will just inspire them to think about taking up marathon running long enough to buy a book about it...

Dinner

I don’t really have anything to say today, as I haven’t really done anything since the last post besides work. It’s all terribly exciting. And not so blog-worthy.

Oh, I did cook the first of my Dream Dinners on Sunday. And can I just tell you that, yes, it actually is possible for me to mess up a meal that is already prepped and has the very easy directions on the outside of the ziploc bag.

Oh, before we continue - does the word “baggie” get capitalized? I was reading my book (again) and the word “baggie” was capitalized, as if it were Kleenex or something. But the word Baggie isn’t a trademarked thing, is it? I dunno. Discuss.

Oh, and before we continue - one time my aunt sent me to the store with a list of stuff she needed for a dinner she was preparing. On my list I had “baguette”. I brought home those little mini ziploc baggies.

Which leads us back to my incompetence when it comes to all things kitchen. I decided to take my inaugural Dream Dinner over to my parents’ house to “cook”. In other words I was kinda hoping my mom would just cook it. I mean I had measured out all the ingredients and put them into a ziploc bag, so I felt like I’d really contributed to the dinner enough.

So I arrive at their house and put the ziploc in the freeazer. As soon as I shut the freezer I say, “Crap.” My mother comes into the kitchen with the smile of a woman whose daughter might be turning over a new leaf in the domesticated world. Then she asked, “Crap, what?” I pointed to the freezer, “Crap, I forgot to thaw the damn meal that we are supposed to be eating.”

Her smile fades.

“Well, maybe it’s okay, maybe it doesn’t need to be thawed,” she grabs the ziploc out of the freezer, “Maybe it’ll still be fine, because-” I point to the directions on the bag, “See how it says, Thaw, as the very first part of the directions? Crap.”

Then my loving parents moved into management mode and starting figuring out how to get the food thawed in time to eat. My dad kept yelling out the name of the local pizza restaurant as a very good alternative to my attempting to cook. This seemed like a fine idea to me, but instead we submerged the frozen goods in water for awhile and let them defreeze and become the thawed Dream Dinner they intended to be.

Honestly, how people have families of like 5 kids I really have no idea. They must have the pizza place on speed dial.

Mom is sooooo funny

I am still reading my book for the 11th time, because, shocker of shockers, it is due tomorrow. I do not have time to blog. So I will post a handy list that my smart-ass mother wrote when I moved into my house. She went shopping to stock me up on all things domesticated, because she knew I would probably never get around to those things. Then she decided to label every one of the things that she bought and outline what each item was and how I was to use it. This is my mother being a smartass, because, look at Dawn, she a single working woman and she goes years without using her oven. Whatever. I’m so misunderstood.

Sometimes I make tater tots in that oven.


DIRECTIONS FOR DAWN
1. Paper Towels: Used to wipe up spills; use with cleaning products

2. Ziploc Gallon: Store left overs or seal items that should not be exposed to the air

3. Glad Cling Wrap: This can be wrapped around the multitude of plastic containers you have for left overs (of course, you must have first-time, before you can have left overs)

4. Cascade: Fill dispenser in dish washer. Close door, start wash cycle

5. Dawn Detergent: Use for one or two items as an alternative to the dishwasher.

6. Sponges: Use to wipes up spills and to assist in clean up

7. Comet Bathroom Cleaner: Spray on shower/tub and use #6 to wipe away

8. Windex Multi Task: It’s not just for windows any longer-ergo the name “Multi Task”. It can be used to clean up grease! (that may come from cooking, if you cook) Not sure if you can use it on Corion.

9. Brush/Scrubbers/Scour up Sponge: Use with #5 above on dirty dishes

10. Lysol Power Toilet Bowl Cleaner: Squirt in toilet, let sit a few minutes, swish with toilet brush (NOT DISH BRUSH IN #9), flush

11. Endust: Spray on furniture (NOT THE RED COUCH—ONLY WOOD), wipe with soft cloth (# )

12. Ziploc Sandwich Size: Make and take your lunch to work—No more Jack’s Diner

13. Reynolds Wrap: Put over left overs OR line your pans so you won’t have to use #9

14. Soft Scrub Gel: For your sinks; Not sure if you can use it on Corion (it has Bleach in it)

15. Softsoap: for the kitchen or bathroom, depending where you are the dirtiest

16. Kleenex: for those days you can’t go to work because you have a runny nose

17. Handi Wipes: For the kitchen counters/dishes/etc.

18. Cutting Boards: For all of the lettuce and fruit you will be cutting up

19. Caress: Bar soap for the tub/shower

20. Mainstays Flour Sacks: Use with #11

21. Broom: For the garage/kitchen floor/bathroom floors. Do not use on carpet

22. Dust pan: Use with #21

23. Oven Mitts: For all of the hot food you will be making. Put on hands first before touching hot surfaces

24. Kitchen towels: To be used after you use #5 and #9

25. Mop: To use on kitchen/bathroom floors. Do not use on carpet

26. Tide: Use in washer—not dryer

27. Snuggle: Use in dryer—not washer

28. Bath Towels/Hand Towel/Wash Cloth: For your showers

29. Bath pouf: To be used BEFORE you use #28

30. Toilet Paper: Self explanatory (I hope)

31. Chip Clip: Clip on the top of the chip bag . . . if there is anything left over in the bag

32. Napkins: To be used by diners. Do not put in dishwasher.

33. Jack Links: for those late night/early morning snacks

34. Pasta: Cook according to directions on box

35. Ragu: Heat, pour over cooked #34

BON APETIT!!!!


Is sarcasm hereditary? Me thinks so.

10 Years

I’m officially getting old.

It is very sad.

This weekend I will be attending my 10 year high school class reunion. A decade has passed since I graduated... How did that happen? I’m not quite sure. I’m almost 30 and I don’t feel much older than I did when I was released from the public school system.

I wonder if there will be anyone interesting at the reunion. There were like 600 people in my class and yet I would be hard pressed to name even 50 of them. Where were these other kids? Maybe they were all delinquents and never came to school.

My non-delinquent group of friends won’t be going to the reunion, so myself and a few brave souls will go and represent our clique. The others didn’t feel the need to go because they say that we already hang out with anyone that we care to remember from our high school days. And given the fact that there are roughly 30 of us that still keep in pretty regular contact, I can see their point. They are all planning a dinner for the same night as the reunion, and they are trying to convince us reunion-goers to ditch the reunion and join their party. Something tells me that there will be other parties with the people I’ve actually kept in touch with, so I’m gonna go say hi to some other people I haven’t seen in 10 years and probably won’t see for another 10 years.

Honestly there is only one guy that I have any interest in seeing at all. He was pretty much the only guy that didn’t stay in touch with our big group. He is insanely ambitious and has spent the last 10 years moving around and up the ranks of the United States government. I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if he ran for president someday. I feel like this may be my chance to get on his good side and perhaps get some sort of tax break when he finally makes it to the White House.

But other than that guy I can’t think of anyone I really need to see. I’m ridiculously good at keeping in touch with people and so anyone I’ve ever been found of is still pretty much in my life. But you never know. Maybe some of the Rah Rah girls got fat, or some of the brainiac dorks got cute. These are the kinds of things I need to go investigate.

The other night I opened up a bottle that I’ve had for the past 10 years. I’ve moved this damn bottle with me everywhere I’ve moved (and that has been A LOT of places). It is an old empty Snapple bottle that has contained three rough paper towels for 10 years. On those paper towels me and two of my friends wrote out our dreams the night before we graduated. We were going to bury the bottle and then come dig it up on our ten year reunion. But something happened and we didn’t bury it. Instead I kept it. Because you all know how I hate to throw things away.

I opened it the other night and found my dreams hastily scribbled on the paper towel we had taken from a random public bathroom in the middle of the night, mere hours before we were going to graduate. I vaguely remembered what I wrote on the paper towel, but over the years I always wondered if I was even close to what I’d wanted to be back when I was new.

As I read the paper towel I realized that I haven’t really changed that much at all, and I think that is a good thing:

“.....I want to be wealthy. But most importantly I want to be happy and satisfied with who I am and where I’m going. I want to promise myself to never let myself stop living. I want to live life to the fullest and constantly be doing new things and make myself try everything at least once...I want to have kids but only when I’m 100% completely ready and I want to raise them well so that they are good people....Never grow old and never stop making memories.”

It seems that I have always been a bit introspective.

Funny thing is, I don’t think my wants have changed much. Although now I’d really like to be wealthy, screw the happiness...

Dreams

I’m happy to report that I made it through a night without dismantling my shelves. This is progress. I was still pretty sure they were going to fall on my head though, so my dreams were a bit violent, but at least the damn things stayed on the wall.

Oh, didja you guys see Oprah today? The part where Jon Bon Jovi went to Bon Jovi Lane? That was where I spent a week getting heat stroke this summer. It was cool to see the houses all complete. I’m looking forward to going back in November and really getting a chance to catch up with the families and see them all settled in. They didn’t spend enough time on it if you ask me, they were too busy giving us countless shots of Bon Jovi’s too-bleached hair. And why is this the one time in 9 months that Matthew McConaughey had an actual shirt on? Come on Matt! These Katrina victims need some cheering up! Take off your damn shirt.

I love that Oprah is now outsourcing her good deeds to other celebrities. She doesn’t have time to go to all these places and hug all these crying people, so she sends pretty famous people to do it for her. Oprah is too busy saving the entire world to worry about Bon Jovi Lane. I mean come on.

In exciting news today I went for my first session at a place called Dream Dinners. Have you heard of this place? I think I love it. You basically go and prep a gang of different meals, then you take them home, freeze them and eat them throughout the month. I’ve been looking for a place like this so that I could have real food in my house to eat. Something that is a bit fresher than the Lean Cuisines I live on. What I’ve really been looking for is someone to prepare the food for me and bring it over so I can freeze it, but I haven’t found that yet. I did find Dream Dinners.

It only took me about a half an hour to prep all the food and then I was off with my arms full of meals. Now, whether or not I actually COOK and then EAT these meals has yet to be determined. I really do think I have a mental block against cooking. It is bizarre. All things domestic are just so lost on me. I could write you a poem that could literally make you cry and I could pick up a paintbrush and paint a human face, but cooking? Not so much. Today I actually dusted my stove. Do normal people use their stoves so infrequently that they need to dust it every once in awhile? (Of course I think that I passed normal by as soon as I went into detail about my sleepwalking redecorating...)

So right now, in my freezer, I have like 6 meals ready to go. Well, they aren’t so much “ready” as they are “frozen” and in need of some “actually cooking”. The “actual cooking” is what I fear may put a screeching halt on the Dream part of Dinner.

But the fact that there is real food in my freezer is a tremendous step in the right direction. The “right direction” being any direction that doesn’t lead me to the McDonalds that is two feet from my friggin’ house.

Sleeping Issues

I think I have psychological issues that need to be addressed. And mostly these issues come out when I am sleeping. They are weird, to be honest. And now they are taking on even weirder tones.

I have been a sleepwalker since I was a wee little child. Who knows why. I personally think that my brain is incapable of turning off for that long and needs to do something to keep it occupied. So it takes its body for walks sometimes. I used to wander more when I was a kid, but now I very rarely even leave my room. I usually wake myself up before I get too far. It’s all very confusing, yet at the time it is happening it makes perfect sense. You know how sometimes you have dreams that really make no sense whatsoever, but somehow you know exactly what is going on? When I sleep walk it’s similar to that in that yes, it seems weird that I’m moving all my pillows onto my bed, but at the same time I know that it’s because there is water rising very fast in the room. But just like in my dreams I know that there really isn’t water, I’m just dreaming, so the moving of the pillows is slow and methodical and when I’m done I go back to bed. Seriously. I have issues.

Usually the sleep walking doesn’t involve moving things, I usually just pop out of bed and think I see things in the shadows. I’m so used to this by now that I simply turn on the light quickly to calm my active imagination, then I go back to sleep. It’s a weird little battle between my dreaming brain and my awake brain and it happens a lot. It depends on the night which brain will win.

The other night the dreaming brain seems to have won out. I hung this shelf-type thing above my bed during a decorating kick this weekend and I ended up hanging it a little too high. I added a candle stick to the shelf and called it decorated. Then when I went to bed I looked up and saw this shelf hanging above my head and I was convinced that it was going to fall off the wall and kill me in my sleep. And the candle stick was going to finish the job with a sharp jab to my temple. It wasn’t going to be a pretty death. I tried to put these thoughts out of my head and sleep, but apparently the thoughts weren’t going anywhere. When I woke up in the morning I looked up and the shelf was gone. I looked around and it was on the floor, with the candle stick sitting next to it. Once I saw the shelf I remembered taking it down, because at the time it seemed the only logical way to avoid death by candlestick.

That morning I replaced the shelf and its candlestick and actually added a couple more little candles in glass thingys. That night I looked up and was scared of the shelf again. And now with the added candles there was even more stuff to fall on me. Sleeping is so dangerous. The next morning I woke up and found my wall to be shelf-free again. This time I had to take down three candles, a candlestick and the shelf in my sleep.

See, now this is psychotic, yes, but I’m also thinking that it’s kinda productive. Do you think I might be able to do other things in my sleep? Like vacuuming or make the laundry? Or since I seem to be into renovations, maybe I could paint a wall or something?

I dunno. All I know is that I am going to mentally beat that shelf. I’m re-hanging it up every night until it makes it to daylight while on the wall. I don’t know what you all are doing in your sleep but I’m mentally challenging myself as well as redecorating. You all are so wasting those 7 hours a day, I’m telling ya.

Geography

http://www.pibmug.com/files/map_test.swf

My mother sent me the above link today in an e-mail. It is a geography test in which you drag the names of all the states to their location on the U.S. map. Yeah. I honestly knew 8 of the states. That’s not even a joke. That is very very sad. What went wrong in my education? Shouldn’t I know these? You know what’s weird? I think I could probably name and place all the European countries just fine. But then again there are not as many of them, and lets face it - Italy is a hell of a lot cooler than Nebraska. No offense to Nebraska.

You know what else happened today? The Fall TV season officially kicked off. And my Tivo is officially already tired. I looked at it this evening and I had like 6 shows I had to watch just from today. Good lord that is going to take some time. Summer months are my most productive months because I don’t have 20 hours of TV I have to watch every week. Watching TV is like a part-time job. One that I’m much better at than my full-time job, I might add.

And then if you look at my geography test scores and my TV watching time I think that it becomes very apparent why I don’t know where Nebraska is on the map. I was too busy watching TV to study stupid school things. And can I just tell you (no offense to Nebraska again) but I have gotten by just fine in life not knowing where 40 of the states are. Could I have gotten by as well if I didn’t know who the Huxtables were? Or, god forbid, Brenda and Brandon Walsh? I think no. I would have been a social outcast.

Sitting around telling people where the states are while they talked about how Dylan cheated on Brenda while she was in France. I’m sorry, but Brenda never would have gone to Nebraska, so there was no need to know. France though, France I went ahead and made a mental note about. That and the mental note to never date a troubled rebel on a motorcycle. Especially if he looked as old as Luke Perry did while he was still supposedly in high school. Receding hairlines are a dead give-away for a deadbeat high school senior.

Pile o’ Words

If you were wondering - this is what 65,000 words looks like in hard copy form. Good times. I received this in the mail from my publisher and I am blessed with yet another opportunity to read my book before it is sent out to the masses. Really, I just think I’ve had enough of reading this thing. I’ve read each chapter probably at least 10 times by now, with the writing and rewriting and copy edits and the disagreeing with the copy edits and so on and so forth.

This is the first time I’ve seen it all at once. Usually I deal with the chapters on an individual basis, and somehow that seemed less intimidating than this big ol’ stack of papers. And thank god, because I don’t know what I would have done if I’d thought about this big ol’ stack of papers when I was writing the big ol’ stack. I probably would have been paralyzed by how many pages I was going to need to write. Taking it one chapter at a time, 5 or 10 thousand words at a time, that was a little easier to digest.

So then. We are getting ever closer to the book being in actual book form. We’ve moved off the computer and onto the paper. Soon this paper may be cut into actual book-sized pages and then, THEN, those pages will be bound together and distributed to those masses I spoke of earlier. Those masses being pretty much just my mom and Chipper Jen. Both of whom will be expecting a complementary copy, so I doubt that this will be the money-making venture I was hoping it would be. Oh well, maybe I can make some extra money with the proof-reading skills I’ve acquired during this process.

But then again, I doubt that, as I am the world’s worst proof-reader. Which is okay, seeing as though I have not only an editor, but a copy editor, a proof-reader and yet another editor looking over my pile o’ words. So far they have all done a brilliant job transforming my sometimes questionable grammar into something somewhat coherent. You know what I was thinking while “reading” this book this weekend (and by “reading” I mean, staring off into space, thinking about everything BUT this book (I’m a bit bored by the book on the 11th read-thru))? I was thinking how many people probably read over that James Frey book that turned out to be complete BS. And then I was thinking how pissed off all of them were that he duped them all. And then I was thinking that it took pretty big balls on his part to knowingly lie to so many people. Powerful people too. I would have an ulcer by this stage in the writing process if I knew I was lying, let alone if friggin’ Oprah called and said she wanted to be bestest friends because of my true story that was in fact a load of poo.

These are the things I think about instead of reading my book for the 11th time. I also organized my entire house and cleaned a little as well. I highly recommend my book, I do not highly recommend reading it 11 times. Unless you have some spring cleaning you’ve been meaning to get to.

I Heart Heights

So I took the kid to the rock climbing place tonight. She’s gone a couple of times on the mobile rock climbing thingy’s at community events and she really seemed to like it so I thought we'd try the real deal.

One of my proudest moments with her was a few years ago when she went on the mobile rock climbing thingy for the first time. She was scared out of her skull, but didn’t really want to show it. I told her she would be fine and to go try it out. She made it up about a third of the way and then dropped back down, because she was too scared, "I can’t do it." I looked at her and pointed to the top, "You can totally do it, go all the way up and ring that bell up there, it will be cool, you can totally do it."

She turned back to the wall, looked up at it, took a deep breath and started climbing. It took her forever to climb up that damn wall; she was shaking and sweating and breathing hard (fear of death is a good thing to expose a child to, right? Right.) Then after about 5 minutes of that fear she managed to make it all the way to the top. She reached her shaking hand out and rang the bell and then looked back down to me with the biggest smile I’d ever seen.

She pushed off the wall and repelled back down to the ground. Before she even hit solid ground she screamed, "I DID IT!" I nodded as she raced right back up the wall.

It not that she’s a fearless kid, it’s that she’s a kid that will try stuff even if she is afraid of it. I think that is pretty cool. Then again, I haven’t seen the effects of a teenager with this mentality, so it might lose its coolness soon.

So tonight we went to the rock climbing place to bond and climb and conquer.

Uh, it turns out I’m pretty afraid of heights. I think I already knew that, but I don’t think I’ve ever had the occasion to be quite so high off the ground with only my hands holding me. Hmmm.

See, you go up the wall, and that part I don’t mind. But then you have to repel back down the wall. You’d think that wouldn’t be a difficult thing, seeing as though there is a nice little rope/repeller thing attached to you and you’ve seen that no one else has plummeted to their death while doing this. But then.



See, it’s really not in my natural make-up to throw myself off of walls. Something just didn’t feel right about that. It took me about three climbs before I was able to do it. And after I did it, it was actually kinda fun.

My favorite part of the video is the overwhelming support I received from the child. I promise that when I was encouraging her on the rock wall a mere three years ago I never said, "You suck." They grow up so fast.

It’s BAAAAAAACK

Dude. It is slightly unhealthy how much I love ‘Dancing with the Stars’. I really can’t get enough of this show. And what started as a guilty pleasure a couple seasons ago is now just a pleasure. I really like this show and think it has managed to pull itself out of the completely cheeseball category that it was in for the first season or two. But then again, there is a very good possibility that I might have just gotten used to the cheeseball and have in fact become a cheeseball myself. Actually now that I think about it the show really hasn’t changed at all - there are still the horrible cover songs and the C-list actors and the SEQUINS! So yeah. I’m the cheeseball.

But I’m okay with that.

I seriously love this show. Although I’m wondering why it is that they can’t get bigger stars to come on. I don’t really know who any of the women are that are supposedly “famous”. Besides Vivica A. Fox I couldn’t tell you anything about any of the other girls. I’m not one to point out failing careers, but would it kill Jennifer Grey’s agent to try to get her on this show? Could you even imagine? Oh, that’s almost too much to even dream of.

It’s only the first week of the show, and everyone seems to be a lot better than they usually are at this stage. This is because they’ve had 6 FRIGGIN’ WEEKS to train. What? You know how many things I could do well if I took six friggin’ weeks to train for them? Wasn’t part of the fun watching these people learn how to dance over the weeks? Guess not.

I have my top three already for the show:

Joey Lawrence. If there is some way he could grow his hair out before next week I think he’d have a much easier time getting votes. He looks creepy and white supremacist/bad guy on a Lifetime movie-ish and that is taking away from his good dancing. Also, if the hair thing doesn’t work out by next week, I at least want to see him make an effort to come out with sleeves on his damn shirt. The lack of sleeves is not helping his efforts to look unincarcerated.

Mario Lopez. I have had a crush on Mario since back in the AC Slater days. It’s the dimples. I’m a sucker for dimples. And given his frequent flashing of them, I’m thinking I’m not the only one who enjoys the dimples. The dimples alone were enough to get my vote, but my man Mario can move. And unlike Joey, I recommend Mario wear as little clothes as possible while dancing.

Emmitt Smith. Can we just give a big hurrah to the producers of this DANCING show for finally finding a black man who can dance? God lord. Last season they were able to find the only two uncoordinated black men in the country (Master P and Jerry Rice) and I believe those two men did a disservice to the entire race with their horrendous dancing. Emmitt not only knows how to dance but he also knows how to make dancing look like something that is more fun than a colonoscopy. That is a feat P and Rice couldn’t quite get.

So there you go. Way too much information about a show none of you are probably watching, because none of you are probably as big a dork as I am. Oh well. Maybe if I watched something besides Dirty Dancing for the better part of a decade things might have been different.

New Roommate

We have activity in Casa de Dawn. In an exciting development my guest room now has a guest in it. And a lot of shoes.

The guest is a friend of mine named Jen. I gave her the nickname Chipper Jen back when we were training for a marathon together (and by “together” I mean “Jen 4 miles ahead of Dawn because she can run and Dawn cannot”) and she was obnoxiously chipper about all things running and sweat-inducing. Her positive nature combined with my hatred of running did not always mix well and quite often involved me unplugging my hearing aides.

So then. The Chipper one has found herself homeless so she decided to come take advantage of Hotel Dawn for a little while. It should be an interesting setup. It seems as though I am once again rooming with someone who is quite different than me. Aside from the chipper nature I spoke of earlier we also tend to keep opposite sleeping schedules as well as keeping very different food. The main difference is that she actually keeps food in the house. And most of it is not easily identifiable by me because of its healthy nature.

The two of us went grocery shopping last night and I bought 5 bags of salad and some chips and salsa and Jen bought things like this:

What? Why? Why make something like looks like cheese but is really a vegetable? I don’t get it. Of course if it tastes like cheese I might have just found a decent way to get the vegetables that I usually avoid. Hmmm. Not a bad idea. But still, I doubt even the lure of cheese-flavored vegetables are going to get me anywhere near something that says “cheese food alternative” on it. I do not need a cheese food alternative, thank you very much. A vegetable food alternative I might be able to get excited about though.

I leave you with a picture I took the other day at an intersection. If you are interested in renting this pole you may call the number listed. Call quick - it’s in a really busy, in-demand intersection...

Dog Dressing

It is that time again. The dog needed a new outfit for a new month. Mom was running a bit behind on the dressing of the dog, as it is already the 10th and she hadn't changed him yet. The poor guy was still in his bathing suit and innertube. He definitely has a sunburn by now.

I happened to be at the house when Mom changed the dog, so I took a little video. Mom was unaware that my digital camera could take videos and therefore didn't know I was taking a video. I cannot tell you how happy Mom is about me posting a video of her on the internets. Really. She may disown me. Or at least hide the dog from me - which might be worse.

A Picture

I took a lovely picture today. It is really a piece of art. I’ve titled it “Election Season”. Isn’t it gripping?

This is the pile of work that I found waiting for me yesterday. Every one of these pieces of paper represents something that I am to make pretty. Holy carpel tunnel Batman. I put the Shit Bitch Bear on the work, instead of saying, "You is fine." The bear is just saying, "Shit bitch."

This pile also represents my job security - because I don’t know if you can see the beautiful design elements on these things, but lets just say that my ability to take 40 of the same stick figure drawing and make them into 40 unique looking mail pieces is why I have a job. Maybe at the end of the election season I’ll lay out all the pieces I did, so you can have a before and after shot.

Of course after the election I’ll be in some other place. Some place far far away. I do not think that it is a mere coincidence that I made my final flight arrangements today for my November Saving/Seeing the world trip. We’re gonna need something to look forward to in order to face this pile o’political propaganda.

Oh, speaking of influencing the vote:

Go to this site: http://www.my58.com/hosthunt/index.html

Then go to where it says: Voting Starts NOW!

And vote for Rafael.

He's my buddy (you remember him from the ChrisKwanziKah video last year) and hopefully he'll win this contest and become famous and rich and then buy me things. What this has to do with you, I don't know. But I'm sure something wonderful will happen to you if you vote. There may even be a ChrisKwanziKah sequel in your future if you vote NOW! Do it for the kids (that’s what we put on all the political mail, so I’ll try it here.)

Bathroom Wall For Sale

Okay. So I might have issues with taking pictures in bathrooms. I might need to talk to someone about my fascination with the bathroom photo op. But until then I offer you this pic:

I just think these are hilarious. These were in the stall of a bathroom I visited today. The fact that we are now selling ad space in the friggin’ stall of a bathroom is insane. What is the world coming to? Is there no space left on the planet that is not for sale to companies looking to advertise? And is the bathroom stall the last place on the planet that people actually stop long enough to absorb an ad?

There are several things about these ads that puzzle me. First of all, who the hell would ever call someone whose ad they saw in the friggin bathroom? It’s weird. And I don’t think I want to have anything to do with any company that is trying to reach out to me while my pants are down.

And another thing. When the sales people go out to sell these ads (and a thing on top of this thing - how crappy is your sales career going if you are selling bathroom stall ads?) are they selling a package deal? Like, “For the bargain price of $500 you will reach peeing people throughout the Sacramento area at many fine establishments.” Or do they sell specifically for each stall, “For the bargain price of $500, today only, we have an opening up at the Indian restaurant on J Street. There is a very high class of customer that frequents this establishment and given that it is Indian food, they are also frequenting the bathroom.”

And here’s another thing that is confusing about this particular ad space:

Hmmm. I have to call them so they can e-mail me their number so I can call them? Seems to me like this is an awful lot of work. Isn’t that kinda what ads are for? Communicating contact information? Why is it that I have to contact you to get contact information? And if I’m getting my contact information to you, haven’t I already made contact with you? So why would I need more info on how to contact you? I don’t get it. I mean, I get that this is just a ploy to get your contact information and e-mail - but it seems like a long shot that anyone is going to actually 1) call any number they saw in the bathroom (that doesn’t have the words “for a good time” next to it) and 2) is going to hand over their contact information without any questions. The whole thing just seems a little too complicated for me. I’m having enough problems trying to get the automatic flushing toilet to actually automatically flush. I don’t have any time for bulk mail in the bathroom stall. Thank you.

I Heart Camping

For the third year in a row I chose to spend my Labor Day weekend camping. For the third year in a row I remembered that I do not like camping. I believe that this year marks the end of my yearly journey into nature. Or it at least marks an end to my yearly sleeping in the nature. The nature I don’t mind so much. The sleeping ON the nature? Not really my thing. I kept saying, “I paid a lot of money for my mattress. And I enjoy it quite a bit. I also paid a lot of money for my house, and I enjoy it too. Why have I abandoned both of these things to vacation with wildlife?”

This year I didn’t actually sleep on the nature, I slept on a Chevy Tahoe. Or in one. My air mattress lost all of its air and the air blower-upper-thingy lost all of its battery power, therefore I took refuge in the Tahoe. The only problem with the Tahoe was that I couldn’t stretch my legs out, so both my knees were cramped up all night. And then when I was getting in the Tahoe I somehow kept setting the alarm off. I had no idea how I was doing this so I was convinced that I was doing it by merely moving in the Tahoe. Therefore every time I moved even a little throughout the night I woke up and plugged in my hearing aides, fearing that I might have moved too much and set off the car alarm and was now waking the entire outdoors with my attempts to straighten my legs.

Yeah. So when my friend suggested that maybe we could leave in the middle of the night on Sunday, instead of sleeping with the nature again, I heartily agreed with this plan. This plan would involve me driving in the middle of the night, but this plan would also involve me sleeping on my very nice mattress and not sitting in very bad traffic today. This plan seemed awesome to me. The only bad part of the plan was that I’d gotten approximately two hours of sleep in my bended-legs/no-movement-allowed Tahoe bed, so I wasn’t exactly wide awake for the midnight drive home from Big Sur. Thank god for XM radio. God knows I enjoy theme radio stations like All 90's and Broadway. He also knows that these are just the songs to keep me awake when all I want to do is sleep.

So we all made it home in one piece and I got to spend my Labor Day doing no labor at all, instead of spending it sitting in traffic, thinking about all the work I should be doing instead of sitting in traffic. So you see we made the right choice.

And to help you realize why I made the choice to go camping in the first place, I give you these pics.

I enjoy the ocean. I also enjoy big huge rocks that I can climb and look out on the ocean. Perhaps next year we can go to the ocean and the big huge rocks and just stay in a cabin. This would help involve my enjoyment of sleeping in beds indoors. It would be so exciting.