Me again! Seems like it’s been a while.
I sometimes have those days where everything is super-intense and trippy and amusing. I figure I earn them as a reward for my days of suffering due to my whacked hormones. That’s been the last few days. It snowed Wednesday night, so everyone from work was getting into accidents. Micci slammed into a pole. I got to test the limits of my anti-lock brakes trying not to slide into a busy intersection. Michael parked his car deep in a snowbank in the office parking lot. He made Ray help him push it out, and didn’t even buy him a wedge sandwich from SuperAmerica in appreciation. Micci went to lunch and came back with pinkeye. Pam could barely talk, and every time I saw her, she was wearing sunglasses. I didn’t ask. In the Y parking lot, I saw a guy walking in wearing baggy sweatpants, proudly sporting wood1. Um, wouldn’t you just wait in the car until it went down? Then there was the old guy waiting for the cross-trainer when I finished. As he climbed up, I told him to hold on a second and I’d clean it off. He didn’t want me to. He stood in my way as I crept in alongside the machine to get to the handles, then had to circle him to get to the other side. He said, “I didn’t know ladies sweated!” I replied, “You don’t even want to know.” Shiver. After that, I remember arguing with the kid at the grocery store checkout counter about who would win the coloring contest, him or me (duh). And trying to convince the girls at the coffeeshop to keep a shotgun behind the counter. And eating cheese with Heather, because she now has too much incentive to purchase it (and I thought coffee was a bad habit). She drank a whole bottle of wine by herself, but the thing makes her a high-class drunk is the use of the appropriate wine glass and complementary cheese and fruit. It’s all in the details. Friday and Saturday, we went to Nye’s. Both nights, I was still a regular. Weird. Saturday, we started Christmas shopping. I’m usually way into the holidays, mostly because I like buying people stuff, and it’s weird when you just send gifts randomly. Christmas is a good excuse. This year, I’m starting late, due to being really, really distracted, and really, really broke until just now. After brunch, we went to the Soo Visual Arts Center, and now I’m thinking I want to buy all my presents this year from little galleries. Holy crap! Also, I bought myself something. Of course. After that, Heather and I arrived at a compromise on the TV issue. See, we’re renting out the downstairs of la casa, which means that everything down there had to migrate upstairs or into the garage. The TV was an issue for me. I hate it. I do2. Not only does it suck because it’s the TV, it’s ugly as hell. It’s almost as old as me, and it would function better as ballast in a cargo ship than a video-display device. Anyway, I finally gave in on the TV on one condition: that we get one that looked good. My criteria were simple: silver, and Philips. The rest was up to her. So when I told people about buying it after the fact, they had important questions, such as is it hdtv? flat-screen? digital? My answer was: “No, it’s silver. And Philips.” Here’s the new addition to our family:
Where Chiva spent the night.
That’s the original tree skirt, too. It’s felt, with sequins and bric-a-brac. If only more things in my life featured bric-a-brac.
- Pizza Luce*
- French Meadow Bakery*
- Seward Cafe*
- Triple Rock Social Club*
- Birchwood Cafe
- Quang’s
- Bryant-Lake Bowl*
- King & I*
- Cafe Brenda
- Jasmine Deli
* Added bonus: good scene!
So as you can see, my life is still immensely fascinating, and prominently features brunch and shopping. There’s some other stuff, but when half of it requires censoring, what’s the point? And there you go. Good night!Jenni
1 Speaking of wood, I am in love with my woodshop. And this week is the last class. I think I might cry. I’ve realized the teacher, Chris, doesn’t hate me at all. He seems to kind of like me, or at least tolerate my socializing while waiting to use the power equipment. And he says nice things about my project, so that seems like a good sign.
Last week was all about sanding. I came home with my hair full of sawdust, and my clothes covered in handprints. I was psyched. I made the high school kid race me (well, my tabletop) through the TimeSaver (which has a really awesome warning graphic of a finger being pinched between the rollers. My declaration that it would make a great tattoo was only met with vague nods from the weird married couple). I won, of course. I rocked the disk sander and the kreg jig (yes, the kreg jig) and I was proud of the bruise I got on the palm of my hand from pinching it in the router. There were a few slow moments when Chris got out his case of router bits and told us what all of them did. Since I have trouble picturing the end result without seeing it in action, I tend to zone out and do what most of us do, which is think about sex. And woodshop doesn’t make that easy, since, as I’ve previously noted, woodshop is dirty. So I start daydreaming, and only tune back in long enough to giggle to myself at things like ‘pocket screw’. Yes, I’m totally Beavis.
2 Even though by typing that, I’m going to get yelled at again. Which is fine; I deserve it.
3 I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been dissed for being way into my Christmas tree. I don’t care. My Christmas tree rules. First of all, it’s silver. It’s an original, from the 50s, not one of those crappy reproductions that Urban Outfitters has in their windows. Each of the branches comes in a little brown-paper tube, labeled in my grandpa’s handwriting to denote the proper placement on the tree. Also, it comes with a four-color rotating light. If you tell me my Christmas tree sucks, I will come to your house and fight you. Or possibly just shake my head in pity because you cannot comprehend its perfection.