Why must they continue to call it Chick Lit?

Just because it's written for women, by women?

If that's the case, where's the Dick Lit section at Borders?

If you spend your life being a hate-filled little troll

You should stop doing that.

Menu of the Gods

Beau is having surgery (not minor, but not major either... minjor?) on Friday. I'm his designated driver/nursemaid/pharmacy runner.

I told him I was heading to the store tonight and I asked if he had any requests for food over the weekend.

I'll try to accurately transcribe his detailed list below:

• Chicken soup
• Cheese sticks

:)

Superserious vinyl collection, part deux

Came in to another surprise this morning. 

Because I work with grownups

As I type, the men in the office are in a frenzy.

Apparently, there's a turd on the floor of the men's room.

And they're all crowding in to get a look at it, daring someone to poke it and see if it's real.

Sigh.

15 things I learned at my first (and likely last) Rush concert

1. It's kind of a sausage fest. 
2. When the show is a sausage fest, there are NO LINES to get into the ladies' room (which blew, and continues to blow, my mind). 
3. From what I observed about the group of fellas next to me, doing boatloads of blow and smoking a ton of weed make you an excellent air drummer/air guitarist.
4. It is not necessary to shave, get haircuts, or even shower regularly to be a die-hard Rush fan. 
5. Bands made up of older dudes tend to start right on time (which is nice). 
6. Ten-minute drum solos still happen in real life.
7. There are bands out there who still perform for three and a half hours. 
8. The tailgating is fun, because the fans are really nice (they share their SunChips!).
9. Dudes in the parking lot sell glass pipes pre-packed and ready to go! :P
10. In the beer line, you shouldn't make a joke about the dude who looks like he hired his date until you know for sure whether or not that dude is a highly respected, retired Colorado Avalanche player (who knew he'd be so short!).
11. It's a pretty mellow crowd until everyone has to make their drunken way down the stairs (at Red Rocks) at the end of the evening. Then you hear things like I have a feeling I'm gonna hurt myself reeeeeeeal bad.
12. Rush fans are fanatics who know every word to every song and happily stand for the duration of the show. 
13. The band, whether it's your kind of music or not, is really tight and extremely talented. And they seem like super-nice fellas.
14. It is possible to get veeeeeery sleepy at a 2-billion-decibel show. 
15. Whether you like the band or not, if it makes someone you love happy to go, it's totally worth it.
    

In honor of Love Yourself Week

Here are 30 things I do well.

1. Make couscous (especially Moroccan Peanut and Tomato Dill versions)
2. Drive (everybody thinks they do this well, but not everybody does)
3. Speak my mind when the situation calls for it
4. Win over cats, dogs, and little kids
5. Sleep in
6. Screen calls (I'll admit it; I loathe the telephone)
7. Simultaneously watch TV and do a crossword puzzle (it used to be watch TV and do homework)
8. Obliterate passive voice in advertising copy (it runs RAMPANT)
9. Handwriting
10. Wear red
11. Care for my huge mane of curly hair
12. Relax (this is surprisingly difficult for a number of people)
13. Paint my own toenails
14. Read
15. Spell
16. Make lists
17. Feed the neighborhood squirrels
18. Live pretty well on the salary I make
19. Give hugs
20. Pay my bills on time
21. Finding the scritchy-scratch place behind the ears that make cats happy
22. Tune out extraneous noise in an effort to concentrate on the job at hand
23. Shop sales (which helps with no. 18)
24. Live alone/enjoy solitude
25. Eat well (meaning, I'm a good eater, not that I eat carrots and celery)
26. Make myself laugh (maybe others, but definitely myself)
27. Diffuse tense situations
28. Find good books on Amazon.com for cheap (I've got it down to a science)
29. Give gifts
30. Love the people (human and furry) who mean the most to me

Toe thumbs

Beau and I watched a weird story about a dude who was feeding sausages to an eel (side note: yuck. Eels look like turds with teeth), and--surprise!--the eel mistook his thumb for a sausage and bit it off. They had footage of the event. Can't really blame the eel; the dude was feeding it finger-shaped food.

So the dude (yes, I'm aware I keep calling him dude--you would too if you saw him) was without a thumb. And, of all the digits you could lose, that's the one you'd miss the most. So he got radical surgery. He had one of his toes removed and placed on his hand in lieu of a thumb.

He had a real-life toe thumb. I'd include a picture, but it's too disturbing (but there's a colorful array of images to be found on Google).

I don't know that I could hold hands with toe-thumb dude.

Could you?

Even though I've been out of school for years

It still puts a spring in my step when I buy school supplies.

Haiku of the Day

NyQuil, I love you.
One sip, and I'm off to sleep.
Waking up is hell.

Someone stole/used/also had

My idea

.

(Oh well, it's still awesome.)

Haiku of the Day

Is being so mean
Really that much easier
Than just being nice?

Yikes

One of my coworkers has a son going into college in the next week or two. We were chatting about it when one phrase stopped me:

"He's going into physical therapy, we've decided."

Whuck?!?

The kid doesn't get to pick his own major? 

That's the way to ensure that he'll be an "artist" who lives in their garage and sculpts items out of cockroaches and rat feces.

Shareworthy

"The greatest obstacle to connecting with our joy is resentment."
-Pema Chodron

I want to go to there

The F. Scott Fitzgerald home in St. Paul, MN. You can't go inside, but I'd just like to touch one of the bricks.

I found this pic on a great site called writers' houses. Brings out the stalker in me, it does. (Though, I don't know if it can really be considered stalking if the stalkee is loooooong dead.)

Blue Man

This is one of my favorite of Beau's drawings. I am its proud owner and I'm happy to display it in my house.

How important are McNuggets to you?

Important enough to go on a rampage and end up in jail?

Check out the crazy McNugget Lovah below. She lost her shit when she found out that McNuggs aren't on the breakfast menu.

The magic begins at around the 1:16 mark.

I highly recommend

Buying a typesetter's drawer like this if you have a collection of earrings, need a place to store beads for jewelry-making, collect smurf figurines (I don't judge), or whatever.

I found one at an antique store, and it's great for jewelry (yes, I have a lot of earrings. Sue me.).

Superserious vinyl collection

At my desk, I have a collection of awesome record albums (and if you're too young to know what a record album is, you break my heart). Eddie Murphy's Party All the Time, Burt Reynolds' Ask Me What I Am (which has a kick-ass fold-out poster of Burt in a baby blue polyester leisure suit and white patent boots!), John Travolta's album, you get the gist. I think Beau's given me pretty much all of them.

The latest cracks me up (and brings me back to my pre-teen heartthrob days--Bo was by far my favorite Duke).

YEEEEE-HAWWWWWWW!

23 things I learned on my road trip to Santa Fe over the weekend

1. Beau is a jerky-eating machine
2. He can also down a 24-oz. can of Starbucks Double-Shot Espresso in record time
3. Las Vegas, New Mexico, is the place where old school buses go to die
4. Convenience stores are much cleaner than I initially gave them credit for
5. The clouds in New Mexico are so beautiful they look like they've been photoshopped
6. At Trader Joe's, you can buy 15 bottles of wine, two six-packs, and snacks for $111 (I was stocking up, btw, I'm not that much of a boozer)
7. You can spend 78 straight hours with someone and still love them at the end of the trip
8. Our hotel-room neighbors to the west liked to have ridiculously loud early morning sex (5:30 a.m.??? Come on, people!)
9. Breakfast tastes better with chorizo
10. Contemporary Chamber Music sounds a lot like the music you hear when the heroine finds out that the call is coming from inside the house!
11. Overpacking is always better than underpacking (unless you're going to Europe)
12. Las Vegas, New Mexico, has a billboard that says As Seen In the Movies! They're not kidding; All the Pretty Horses, No Country for Old Men, Easy Rider, the Lonesome Dove series, and a slew of others were filmed there
13. Any time my dad calls me when I'm on vacation with Beau, he starts every chat/message with the words I hope I'm not interrupting anything...
14. I'm not usually a fan of religious iconography, but I find myself drawn to it in Santa Fe and I always come back with something bearing the likeness of the Virgin Mary
15. Fatherhood has tamed the craziest bachelor I've ever met 
16. Any time you set the cruise control on the car, someone will inevitably cut you off and slow way the eff down to screw it up for you
17. Beau's musical tastes are much broader than I initially thought (he sat through Kenny Rogers' You Picked a Fine Time to Leave Me, Lucille without even wincing)
18. The man who invented the home pregnancy test is a fan of Contemporary Chamber Music (I met him)
19. Sometimes you DO get to see the person who's driving like a maniac get pulled over (it's one of life's sweeter moments, I assure you)
20. It's freeing to go out of town without your watch
21. You never have to ask yourself if your outfit (big floppy hat and long gauzy dress to fight sun damage) looks stupid in Santa Fe because everyone's outfit looks a little stupid in Santa Fe. Nobody cares
22. They put green chili on everything in Santa Fe
23. When you see a double rainbow, it's not nearly as exciting as that dude on YouTube lets on

I walked in to a coworker's office today

And I noticed that he has a big Ziplock bag affixed to the wall.

It houses his private collection.

It's a collection of his own hair.

No. Sudden. Movements.

If you have one of these attached to your vehicle

You are what is wrong with America.

Film on the Rocks

A bunch of us went to see The Lost Boys at Red Rocks last night. We got rained on a little bit, but we survived (mostly because one of our friends is the feminine equivalent of an Eagle Scout--she brought snacks, blankets, rain coats, and a tarp!).

As it is with all outdoor venues, you get there early and you wait. For a long, long time.

Luckily, Beau is pretty entertaining. Only he would think to make a puppet using a Sharpie and an orange peel.

That's our friend Suz doing the puppeteering.

Finally, the sun went down, the movie started, and we had a great time. 

PEANUT M&Ms ARE ON MY DIET!!*

*They're not, but it does look kind of official when it's all typed out like this. Wishful thinking. 

Bless their hearts

Somebody here actually wrote down that their goal is to win business in North America AND Canada.

Dare I break it to them that Canada is already in North America?

Another Installment of Weird Dream Theater

I dreamt that Adam from Man Vs. Food* wanted to date me.

And I was extremely excited and twitterpated about that fact.

In the cold, harsh light of day, I think going on a date with a fella who's just eaten a seven-pound grilled cheese might have its drawbacks.


*Beau won't watch this show with me anymore because he's concerned that Adam is eating himself to death.

My all-time favorite Mad Men quote

"You're not good at relationships because you don't value them."

--Roger Sterling to Don Draper

I'm quite sure it's just me, but

I don't think the words BLAST, STILETTO, or EXPLOSION are the best words to sell mascara.