Dear Friends:
Danger! Danger!1 I’m wordy today. I didn’t feel like typing much this weekend, and now I’m going to make up for that. I won’t bore you with the weekend play-by-play, because that’s Alex’s job, and it features phrases like “epithelial cells”, which I can’t even spell (I pasted), much less comprehend. I hear it will also feature unflattering photos. Um, great. Instead, I will give you the tastiest morsels. Friday, I… don’t remember. OK, Saturday. Heather and Alex were a model of efficiency with the Thanksgiving prep. All I had to do was make scones and sugar-free cranberry sauce and go pick up the table from my parents’ house, which was a good excuse for me to lay on the couch and talk to my sister for two hours while they cleaned cat hair off the furniture and scrubbed the toilet. The thing about my sister, Stephanie, is that you can’t have her. She is my secret weapon, without which I am rendered ineffectual. She is the one who explains people to me, since I am incapable of figuring them out, and she is really, incredibly good at it2. Saturday night, we had Thanksgiving dinner. I was your cruise director, Julie McCoy, and Alex played the role of Isaac, your bartender. I ate my Tofurky and sugar-free cranberry sauce at the kids’ table, then laid on the floor in a soy-coma. Around midnight, we headed to Nye’s. Alex learned to polka3. Round about half-past-drunk, Alex and Alan were serenading us with cheesy love songs that sounded like something that Jimmy Buffett dreams when he’s got indigestion. Heather needed help not falling down the stairs on the way to the bathroom, so I accompanied her. While I was standing there, another girl came in, so I told her I wasn’t waiting, and I thought the other stall was empty. She went over and pushed the door open and froze in horror with her hands over her mouth, like she just walked into the Blair Witch house. She scrambled to close the door and ran back to where I was standing, almost huddling behind me in fear. I whispered, “WHAT WAS THAT?!” She said, “I don’t know, but it was angry!!” We tried really hard to keep from laughing, but failed. Whatever was in there didn’t come out, and I’ll never know what it was. Sunday, I went to the Y bright and early, and I won for November, just as I said I would.
The website tells me I am #1 out of 74 in points earned and calories burned5, within my assigned group of women aged 30-39. Since Alex considers it laughable that I would compete with close-to-40-year-olds, I also matched myself against women aged 20-29. There’s one girl ahead of me. Since she doesn’t have her username registered, it’s going to take me some time to find and disable her. Don’t worry, my crack team of investigators6 is on the case.
Now, some Monday ephemera to keep you entertained, or something.
ONE: an aim chat with heather*
*normally we speak to one another, but we were on different levels of our mansion. h: what are you eating?
j: spaghettisquash!
h:how novel
j: i will write you a novel about spaghettisquash
j: it’s in the style of ‘choose your own adventure’
j: only this is ‘write your own adventure’
j: i will provide the first paragraph.
h:good plan!
j: my skills as a novelist combined with my incredible photodocumentary techniques make me unbeatable.
j: also, i have created an excellent game
j: it has only one rule.
j: 1. make outlandish and ridiculous claims about your own skills and qualifications.
j: 2. play moves clockwise.
h:that’s two rules
j: sorry, two rules. two rules. TWO: things i have yet to learn.
It’s time for lunch. Bye now.
Jenni
*normally we speak to one another, but we were on different levels of our mansion. h: what are you eating?
j: spaghettisquash!
h:how novel
j: i will write you a novel about spaghettisquash
j: it’s in the style of ‘choose your own adventure’
j: only this is ‘write your own adventure’
j: i will provide the first paragraph.
h:good plan!
j: my skills as a novelist combined with my incredible photodocumentary techniques make me unbeatable.
j: also, i have created an excellent game
j: it has only one rule.
j: 1. make outlandish and ridiculous claims about your own skills and qualifications.
j: 2. play moves clockwise.
h:that’s two rules
j: sorry, two rules. two rules. TWO: things i have yet to learn.
- Your policy of telling everyone everything is problematic, at best.
- misspelled my name7
- told me he appreciated how much effort I must put into a site like that, and therefore
- rewarded me with a joke, which won’t be repeated here, and then proceeded to
- clarify the joke as such: “I don’t know where you’re from, but the above joke hits on ‘Ebonics’ The unofficial Black Street Slang in the USA. HA !!”
Thanks a lot, Frank. I finally have the validation I was seeking.
1 Rules for saying the word “danger”:
try not wearing pants me:
j: hey, notice my LACK of PANTS? also, i’m here to SEE YOU! everything else is SECONDARY! UNIMPORTANT, even!
s: so, you’ll have the usual? stephanie:
no no no, it goes like this:
j (with a remarkable lack of pants): (nonchalant) hey, i’ll have the usual. and also i am completely uninterested in you.
s: want to go to my wood shop? me:
i disagree.
j (pantsless, flushed): my sister is laying dead in the parking lot, but being ignored and occasionally chastised for not paying enough attention to you takes priority! i’ll have the usual!
s (crabby): um, there are two people in line ahead of you. stephanie:
why am i always dead in the parking lot??? you need a new line. 3 It’s hard to dance with gay boys. They don’t know how to lead. 4 This came after the conversation about men’s bathroom habits, which are fascinating and somewhat ritualistic. Alan explained the urinal-standing rules, which I had heard quite a bit about before, but he added even more detail and levels of complexity. I was not aware that the stall is preferable to the urinal, even for peeing. That seems to me to be the equivalent of taking the handicapped stall when there are regular stalls available. Hmm. Also, we learned that one of a male’s biggest fears is the pee trough, because it throws all the rules out the window. And makes me shudder. With laughter! Because boys are funny. Get over yourselves and pee already. And don’t get any on the seat. 5 Fitness poetry might be the worse idea ever. 6 No, they don’t smoke crack. They investigate. I smoke the crack. 7 Which is funny, because you have to do some research from 404lab to find out who I am. I think you’d have to go to plinko to find me. And after doing all that research, to go and spell it wrong? Anyway. Bye.
- You must always say it twice. No more, no less.
- You must say it in a robot voice.
- You must wave your arms in exactly the manner of the robot on Lost in Space.
- Did you know the Lost in Space robot’s name was ‘The Robot’?
try not wearing pants me:
j: hey, notice my LACK of PANTS? also, i’m here to SEE YOU! everything else is SECONDARY! UNIMPORTANT, even!
s: so, you’ll have the usual? stephanie:
no no no, it goes like this:
j (with a remarkable lack of pants): (nonchalant) hey, i’ll have the usual. and also i am completely uninterested in you.
s: want to go to my wood shop? me:
i disagree.
j (pantsless, flushed): my sister is laying dead in the parking lot, but being ignored and occasionally chastised for not paying enough attention to you takes priority! i’ll have the usual!
s (crabby): um, there are two people in line ahead of you. stephanie:
why am i always dead in the parking lot??? you need a new line. 3 It’s hard to dance with gay boys. They don’t know how to lead. 4 This came after the conversation about men’s bathroom habits, which are fascinating and somewhat ritualistic. Alan explained the urinal-standing rules, which I had heard quite a bit about before, but he added even more detail and levels of complexity. I was not aware that the stall is preferable to the urinal, even for peeing. That seems to me to be the equivalent of taking the handicapped stall when there are regular stalls available. Hmm. Also, we learned that one of a male’s biggest fears is the pee trough, because it throws all the rules out the window. And makes me shudder. With laughter! Because boys are funny. Get over yourselves and pee already. And don’t get any on the seat. 5 Fitness poetry might be the worse idea ever. 6 No, they don’t smoke crack. They investigate. I smoke the crack. 7 Which is funny, because you have to do some research from 404lab to find out who I am. I think you’d have to go to plinko to find me. And after doing all that research, to go and spell it wrong? Anyway. Bye.