Oh say, can you see?
Friday was so so strange. Twas Michael’s last day, as previously mentioned. He was sick with tuberculosis or something. Micci went home after a couple hours in the office with what she figured was probably an ulcer. Me, I spent my lunch sitting on the front stairs, crying into the phone. Then Pam came up from Byerly’s with a nasty-looking Oreo torte thing for them and fresh berries for me. We had ourselves a little party, and I left feeling very calm. I went to the Y, where they’re installing new equipment, so half the fitness center is a pile of broken-down medieval treadmills, and the other half looks like the inside of the space station. Runners all plugged in with their hearts wired directly to the mothership, the most effective workout ever. I’m pretty sure after long we won’t even have to move our bodies anymore. Man, everybody’s gonna be calling me a sucker then, for all the work I’ve put in for nothing. The woman on the machine next to me was hunkered down over the display, and I thought maybe she was in some kind of distress until she told me all about the new technique she had discovered: she said if you lean forwards onto the handlebars, you can get through your workout not even breaking a sweat, and the machine still tells you you burned something like 200 calories. Now, I had about ten different issues with that, but I didn’t bring up a one of them. It reminded me of all the equipment you can buy on TV that provides you the best workout ever with zero effort. Haha. Exercise = exertion. If you’re not feeling it, you may as well be at home on the couch. Anyway, I acted all impressed with her discovery, snapped on my headphones, and gave her the ‘now if you’ll just leave me the fuck alone, I’m going for the sprint’ look. With a smile. I came home and worked on my xmas knitting. I’m not as far behind as I thought, but my problem is that I have trouble sitting still. It’s ok to be jumping up all the time when you’re doing most knitting, but if I put down this cable-knit stuff in the middle of the pattern, I will never ever make it right again. So I put on Lost in Translation and managed to only get up about 10 times, as opposed to the usual 20. At ten, we went to Little T’s. You may not be aware that there is an elaborate time-location grid that must be followed for optimum entertainment value. For example, if you want to see the best folks at Luce, you go for dinner at 8 on Thursday or Friday. Little T’s is best from 10 to after bar-close. Suzi’s is best after 9 on weekends. Nye’s is no good until 11. Anyway, I was sitting watching the big round table of alarmingly annoying rockstars, because drunk people are really only amusing to other drunk people. I blue-crayoned my current favorite phrase on the paper tablecloth. She wrote J’s upside down and backwards, then corrected them, forming little red anchors. After I stopped spouting words at a mile a minute (coincidental with the disappearance of the food), I started fantasizing about my bed. I am so old, dude. On the way home, I got creeped out by this flag in one of the neighbor’s yards, which was frozen mid-wave in perfectly calm weather. Today I noticed that the corner is tied to a dead branch, so that the flag is perpetually, very gallantly streaming. Patriotic viagra is what you call that, I think. Saturday, the Y was 75% space station and 25% medieval castle, and everyone there was cute. I was thinking to myself that my overtraining injuries had all receded, and didn’t cause me any trouble working out. I still can’t sit on my foot, and my ankle aches at night, but that’s all. Logically, this makes me very happy. It sucks that the first thought I had, though, was, ‘I must be getting lazy.’ Ha. Then I pulled something in my back lifting. All is well. Later, we set off on xmas shopping excursion #2. The last was ill-fated, as Stephanie was crabby and I didn’t feel like spending money. I ended up buying myself a winter coat, but it was too good a deal to pass up. This time, we were more in the mood for shopping, but we have yet to get the xmas part right: we only got stuff for ourselves. (I attribute this to the fact I’m making almost everything, and have already bought most of the other non-homemade gifts. She has no excuse.) I got an iTrip for my iPod, because the Belkin FM transmitter I originally had is about ten times more stupid than it is useful. I got this sheer thermal undershirt simply because I liked that you could see tattoos through it. The Stupid Factory is my new 2nd favorite store at mallo. I got myself pajama bottoms that say ‘troublemaker’. They were sold out of ‘I love my tractor’, or they’d have been mine, too. That and the big rig stuff… it’s like half that store was invented for me; the half that doesn’t feature baby t’s reading ‘buy me stuff’ and ‘i [heart] me’. Blech. I find this completely charming. You know you’re going to have to put up with poor-quality phone photos from now on, right? Good. And I know I have to stop taking pictures of pets, but this one’s pretty funny. Walking past my 1st favorite store at mallo, she said, ‘do you want to go in there?’ I said, ‘no, i’ve been there three times in the past couple we–ohmygodnewchococat!’ So yeah, I now have little plates with swingin’ bachelor-pad Chococat on them. Too perfect to resist. Since I don’t own plates or silverware or anything, I consider this my first real purchase for my new home. We went to see Tarnation, which was jarring and incredible. It’s the kind of movie that makes you want to go see the SpongeBob movie right after so you can stop being upset. We went to Suzi’s instead. It was the right thing to do. I did some pretty drastic registry-editing today in hopes of tracking down the rogue process that’s making my laptop such a miserable roommate. Therefore, after I restart this thing, I may be back. But then again, I may not. BFF,LYLAS.Jenni P.S. I just heard a song I know was written just for me. And no, it’s not ‘Milkshake’.