Wednesday, December 31, 2008

The Things I Do For People I Don't Know

This might be the second meme request from Mary in which I'm forced to give details about myself. I'm convinced it's because she wants to gather what info she can and then steal my identity to open a crapload of credit cards and max them out at some place really lame, like JC Penney's. Sneaky.

This time, it's in the form of an award. I don't know how this is an award really, since it comes with conditions. But I'm still at "work" and it's New Years Eve and I've watched ENTIRELY too many Twilight Zone episodes in a 7 hour period, so here we go.

This will be my special Last Day of 2008 version of the meme where I will give you 10 honest little nuggets from this special, special - flew by like it was on speed laced with coke - year. Yes, that was an extra "special". I'm serious about things. Here they are in the order of when I thought of them.

10. I saw Baby Mama. In the theater. And not the cheap, second-run theater. But in my defense, Mum and I took Grandma, and her laughing at it made it worth every second of my life lost. (What's worse is that I thought it was a fairly amusing)

9. Due to happy-relationship weight-gain, I purchased and wore one of those hideous beige spanx-type girdle undergarment things. I felt...confined.

8. I had a sex dream about a faceless hermaphrodite. The actual dream wasn't as perverse as that sentence makes it out to be, but damn, I woke up uncomfortable.

7. I called my sister fat. Several times. Recently. I'll probably do it again tomorrow. And every time I do it, I feel better about myself. I'm not sure why since she's still a smaller size than me at 6 months of pregnasty. Funny, that.

6. I didn't see a dead body that I saw.

5. I found a way to blog from Romania. Awesome. And sad.

4. I went to my 10-year high school reunion. And came back from it.

3. I fell out of love.

2. I became David Cross' best friend. I know it, even if he doesn't.

1. I fell in love.

Now you know it all. Don't ask me for anything ever again.

Merry New Year. Merry merry.

Friday, December 26, 2008

UPDATE

It was a dead body.

I walked right by him and had no idea. How horribly sad.

And yet...what a perfect place to go.




I hope you all had a Merry Christmas. Mine was white for the first time since I can remember. And I get to celebrate it by digging out Brendan's car. I miss childhood.

I hope your weekend is filled with rolling around in Christmas swag.

Cheers.

Monday, December 22, 2008

All Work and No Play

This was yesterday:This is today:
So of course I went back to the cemetery (to keep from strangling the cat out of sheer boredom). This time I took my camera. It was at dusk so very few of the pictures turned out awesome. But some of them are purty.

Here's the whackamole bit, though. While I was taking a picture up on a hill, I heard yelling. I turned around and took the earbud out. There was a woman in long flowy skirts standing about 100 yards from me (I don't actually know how far away that is, but people since it's commonly used to mean "not that far", I think it fits). She asked if I had a cell phone. I told her I had left it at home (having just recently had one fall out of my pocket). She did seem to believe me and said that it was kind of an emergency. I told her of a battery shop nearby that might let her use a phone. She mumbled something about just going herself and walked away. And I went back to taking pictures.

45 minutes later, I'd stomped through just about every corner. It had gotten too dark to take any more worthwile pictures and I started toward the entrance. I heard a bunch of sirens and saw flashing lights up ahead. As I kept walking I saw the gypsy coming toward me, this time with some firefighters. They weren't running, or even walking briskly...just headed my direction. I passed them quietly and kept going. Not far behind them were two paramedics carrying medical kits, but still...just walking. At the entrance some cops stopped me and asked if I was the one who called. I said no and they thanked me for my "help".

This is what's weird about that story: If it was indeed an emergency, why weren't they running? Or at least walking quickly? And who was the emergency for? I'd been all over the cemetery and hadn't seen another soul. There's only one entrance and they weren't heading for it. Weird.

Maybe she'd found something.

Like...a dead person.

Above ground.

Anyway, I took pictures. Cemetery at dusk...with something horrible and emergency-like within that I walked right by and never noticed.

Sunday, December 21, 2008

Silent Night

I'm back on the couch in long johns and Harry Potter slipper socks after a brave foray into shin-deep snow. I don't know that Portland has ever had shin-deep snow in my lifetime. It's beautiful.

My original plan for the evening was to trek the 10 blocks to Safeway for cream cheese. The prospect of a morning with cream cheeseless bagels was more than I could bear. I put on what can only be described as FOUR LAYERS of clothing, all of which was awesome thanks to the mid-winter trip to Romania in Feb.

The streets were beautiful. So bright and shinin
g, you'd never think it was night. Every couple of blocks I had to just stop and look around. I think it was the Elliot Smith. He was made to serenade a snowy night. On the way back from the store I got lured into Marie and Palindrome's for some Bailey's hot chocolate and a good game of Scrabble. Which I won. This makes me extra awesome since both of them are extraordinarily lingual and literary. I spelled "zee" twice. Clinched it.

The walk home felt too short...even though a light freezing rain begin a gentle assault on my layers. I just wasn't quite ready to go inside. It was too lovely. So I walked across the street to the Pioneer Cemetery.


I have to say, I'm not a religious person, but I appreciate everything it's done for me. Things like The Exorcist and La Sagrada Família. Ave Maria and Ben-Hur. Christmas and gargoyles. And cemeteries. Such lovely cemeteries. There is nothing more beautiful than a tree-filled cemetery a foot deep in snow with no other living thing around. It's enough to inspire a change to my will that would require both cremation and a overly intricately carved headstone with angels and quotes from Shakespeare. It was peaceful and serene. It was cold and a little wet. It was thoughtful and silent. It was almost a perfect night. But I didn't take any pictures. I didn't want to share it. I know, selfish.

Now I must go bathe my face in chapstick.

Thursday, December 18, 2008

You Better Watch Out

Taken out of context, that line is fucked up.

I sort of remember when I stopped believing in Santa. I was older than I probably should've been (hey, some of us LIKE believing in things) but still in early grade school. It was 4:00 AM, Christmas morning and I heard a noise in the living room. I opened my door as slowly and quietly as I could and peeked down the hallway. The Christmas tree was lit with bubble lights (because we were awesome) and I could just make out my mother putting bits o' wonderful in our stockings.

Deflated. So it's true. Well, I suppose it makes sense. "From Santa" always looked like Mom's handwriting.

Re-inflated. But I still get presents!

And went back to bed until probably around 6:00 AM. I'm sorry, parents.

the Waif and I were horrible snoopers too. Around the first week of December, we'd start to hit all the places we could conceive of hidden gifts. Once they were wrapped and placed under the tree...we lifted, molested, shook and held to the light any and everything with our names on it. What brats.

One year, I got this giant plastic piggy bank in the shape of a Coca-Cola bottle (it's like she knew it was going to run my life one day) that was about as tall as my hip. When wrapped, it proved to be my greatest guessing challenge. I did everything but unwrap it. I think I even put a few fingers in the paper opening to see what I could feel. Didn't do any good, I couldn't figure the fucking thing out. Though I doubt she'd admit it, I still feel today (not too long after that piggy bank has had to be officially retired...which is ok because it had a shitty interest rate) that she got me that bank to punish me for present snooping. Game well played, madam. Well played, indeed.

The lesson here, children, is that your snooping abilities are only as good as the parents you're up against. And she could've taught classes.

Now go find the pickle.

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

We Are Dumbasses...Collectively.

Please excuse the Benny Hill music. Though I normally want to kick puppies when I hear that theme, it really does go with this video. Portland drivers have no idea what to do when the temperature drops below 40. And yet...we all drive Subarus.

**Please note that around 1:08 there's a car that actually switches drivers at the bottom of the hill. I find this to be awesome.**



(Thanks Andrew!)

Monday, December 15, 2008

It's a Marshmallow World

The Christmas pahhhty was a good'un. If my home had gills, one might have noticed it was stuffed to them. That being said, I hope my home never has gills. I imagine it would have a negative effect on the insulation.

Brendan and I are making sugar cookies tonight. I need to do something that doesn't involve a couch. It was 20 degrees and icy so I worked all day on my couch. Now I hate it. Cabin fever gives me extreme emotions. I might make out with it later. Anyone living in the Midwest or East Coast will roll their eyes at the fact that I stayed home on what in their godforsaken part of the world one would consider a mild winter day. Well shut up. My face almost froze half off when I took out the Netflix. And I didn't like it.

My job is making two things very difficult for me this month. Blogging and Christmas shopping. It really is a problem for me, all this working. It makes me not want to type anymore and you know what that means. Less magic for you. But more importantly, I'm normally done with all my shopping by now. Until tonight I wasn't even close. I was going to be left with frantically snatching up whatever I could a few days before Christmas like a DUDE. Thankfully Amazon and eBay saved portions of my bacon. Only portions, mind you...I still have to brave the Winter weather for others. And they won't even know how I suffered for them. Like a martyr that didn't get any sort of biblical write-up or canonization. There's so many of us out there.


Stressing about Christmas shopping makes it difficult to keep my life stress free. That's how you end up with M&Ms in the popcorn. Oh fuck,
Legally Blonde is on again...I gotta go.

Tuesday, December 09, 2008

Black Gold is Cheap

Why isn't anyone talking about the fact that gas is $1.90? Or are they talking about it, but I'm just not listening? Gas hasn't been $1.90 since I was in college (for those who hate maths, that was 2001ish). And wasn't it about $4.50 not too long ago? I mean, I know I don't have a car and everything, but did everything go hybrid and no one inform me? Did the war(s) end? Economic crisis right itself? Did we find a new liquid stash under the wildlife refuges of Alaska? I knew SP was too quiet. Sneaky ho.

Seriously though. Why aren't we outraged? Here we are, watching the world head toward the possibility of a global depression (dramatic, but possible) and no one's even a little irate that gas just magically gotten way the fuck cheaper? I mean...does that mean when it went up a dollar every year, it did so because somewhere Papa needed a new suit? I want to know who's fault this is. I want someone to shake my fist at for this suddenly cheap-as-hell gasoline. Who are these deciders? Who do they answer to? What's going to become of all these rhetorical questions?


I just don't know. This weekend is my 2nd Annual Christmas Cocktail Party. Some of the players have changed, but the game's still the same...see how many snazzily-dressed sardines I can stuff into a basement apartment. I keep staring at my surroundings wondering how I'm going to manufacture more space. It will be an exercise in physics. My favorite.

Tuesday, December 02, 2008

Who Loves Air Travel? I Love Air Travel.

An open letter to the man who took up half of my seat on the flight to Atlanta:

Dear Grease Ball,
You owe me $300. You took up approximately 1/3 of my seat and should therefore reimburse me for 1/3 of my ticket. This should help compensate for most of your left thigh, a healthy portion of your love handles and the meaty portion of your upper arm flattening me against the window with the grease spots from someone's nose on it. I"m also certain that your Huxtable sweater was made entirely of allergens based on the number of times I sneezed in a 4.5 hour period.

And I appreciate that you turned your earphones way the fuck up so that I could hear whatever you were watching since the sound on my in-seat video system didn't work. I really enjoyed that sit-com about the dysfunctional family and their relatable problems. It really helped the time just fly.

But what I really appreciated was your help with exercising my lung capacity. Your exotic aromas of bad hygiene and cheap cologne inspired a new record for holding my breath. I didn't have a Guinness Book handy, but if I did, I probably would have celebrated my beating the record with a $6 individually-sized Ernest and Julio Gallo Merlot.

And when we landed and were stuck on the tarmac for 20 minutes, I thoroughly enjoyed the play by play you gave to your "darling lover girl" that included every minute detail of all the JUST SITTING THERE that people were doing. Obviously the climax came when we finally stopped and you, in your delightful Long Island, was-totally-an-extra-on-The Sopranos accent concluded the tale of travel with how they turned the lights on that people were getting up. I was so riveted, I couldn't take my eyes off your carefully coifed combover.

So thank you, horrible seat buddy. Thank you for enriching my life with way too much information about your own. In fact, I have enough to go on that I'll most likely be able to figure out where to send the bill for the $300 smackers.

Cheerio,
Kara