10 Things You Didn't Know About Me

1. I really like to make my bed. Sometimes I'll take all the sheets and pillowcases off my bed just so I can put them back on.
2. I am a HUGE opera fan. I listen to it with my eyes closed like Frasier. I even took an opera class in college, even though everyone knows I'm less than musical.
3. I have a secret co-dependent relationship with Parmesan flavor Pepperidge Farms Goldfish crackers. NOT Cheddar. Parmesan. Green bag. They're hidden all around my room.
4. I have extreme difficulty saying the word "bathroom" correctly. For some reason I always nasal it, like "baaaaaahh-throom." If you hear me say it right, I've put some thought into it.
5. The only brand of pretzels I'll eat is the Safeway brand. I spit on Rold Gold.
6. I am almost always at least slightly constipated.
7. Peppermint- smell, taste, idea- makes me violently nauseous.
9. I have an uncontrollable picking habit. I like to pick at people's blocked pores and zits and ingrown hairs. I grow hugely irritated if I'm not allowed to do this.
10. I cannot, CANNOT, sleep with my legs bare. I must have long pants on. I don't care how hot it is, I will wear long pajama pants.

The Stupids Go to the Garlic Festival

Today Jack, my mom and I went to the famous(?) Gilroy Garlic Festival, where the deadly combination of lots of food, 90 degree heat, and cheap beer made lots of fat people need medical attention. We probably passed four or five hugely overweight people flat on their wide backs under trees, looking, with the sweat and bulging fanny packs and all, a lot like beached elephant seals. Paramedics hovered over them with water bottles and fans, clearly thinking to themselves, "I went to school to hose down fatties in Gilroy, CA?"

Jack, no lightweight himself, was sweating profusely as well, but I wasn't embarrassed because within ten minutes of our arrival he looked as if he'd poured water all over himself on purpose.

I ate more garlic than a normal person should be able to handle. But look on the bright side, at least I don't have to worry about vampires for the next week. Also, I had the foresight to bring Altoids in case I decided to make out with anyone. I admit it didn't seem likely, but you can never be too prepared. The urge has struck at weirder times.

So we wandered around, sweating on passerby and being sweated on, and eating like we'd never seen food before. I had Garlic Fries, Garlic and Lime Calamari, Garlic Sausage, Garlic Chicken with Garlic Fried Rice, and at least three beers (Coors Light, natch). I currently feel like that overweight and smelly kid that no one would talk to in elementary school.

Who wants to make out?

You Might Be a Weinershnitzel. . .

. . . if you insist that blue balls are a real and life-threatening problem.
. . . if you think your Encino Man hairstyle makes you punkish and cool.
. . . if you let your girlfriend get her panties in a twist about your girl friends.
. . . if you think "I'll call you on Friday" means "I'll call you sometime in the next year. Maybe."
. . . if you refer to all women, even those significantly older than yourself, as "girls."
. . . if you think paying $4.50 for my drink entitles you to touch any part of my body.
. . . if you put a cartoon sticker of Calvin peeing on a different brand of car on your car. You only make Calvin do it because you don't have the cojones to do it yourself.
. . . if you have a tribal tattoo and are not from Samoa. Get your own ethnicity, you poser.
. . . if you ever, ever refer to breasts as "fun bags." This goes for women too. They are boobies, boobs, titties, talents, but NOT "fun bags."
. . . if you put fake bullet-hole decals on your car. Getting shot at is not a good thing. Pretending you've been shot at is a weinershnitzel thing.

New Addition to the Fam

My sister's dog Jake has come to stay with us for a week or so. If we thought that adding one more dog to the dog circus we're already running wouldn't be such a big deal, we were totally wrong. Totally. Jake has extremely long legs and the IQ of a house plant, the result being that we are constantly having to rescue him from trees, large neighbor dogs, the kitchen table, etc. We took all 5 dogs for a walk this morning and an absolutely enormous black lab took a liking to Jake's shapely rump (and it is shapely) and followed us, sniffing happily, for the last mile and a half. We tried to ditch him several times, but he was determined. Either that, or dumb as a box of rocks. I hope he got home okay, because we pretty much shut the door in his face.

Now all our dogs are napping, quite tuckered out from the three mile run this morning, but Jake is still hyper, running into walls and getting tangled up in chair legs. Not God's best work, there.

Dr. Wack Job

Sums him up pretty well, I think.

I am not making this up

This is a real billboard in Utah. This poor Lance fellow is 31 and still single (gasp!) and all those well-meaning Mormons out there are trying to find him a date. It's a publicity stunt for his company and I find it magically delicious. What? A Mormon mission-returner who possibly (note the question mark) has a sense of humor and he's not married? What is this world coming to? If you would like to date this Lance creature (and if you do, you have got bigger problems than a lack of dates), go to www.datelance.com.

Hundreds of Visco-Elastic Memory Cells!

Jacky Poo-Poo, my beloved step-dad, just proved his poo-poo-ness by buying me a lovely squishy mattress thingamabobber, in an effort to cure my famous insomnia (and consequent four-hour-long naps). It is lovely and squishy and I am quite excited to go to sleep tonight.

It does have a distinctly odd smell, rather like moldy Cheerios, but the pamphlet says that is normal for "fresh foam" (perfect for "getting fresh") and should dissapate with time.

So if you see me anytime soon and I smell like moldy Cheerios but look quite rested, that's why.

Wayne Newton and Friends

So my two bestest buddies in the whole big fat world and I are going on a little trip. See if you can guess where we're going. The trip involves a short flight, an inaugural Jager and beer at the airport bar, 116 degree heat, and lots of fake titties. (That's right, I said titties.)

Say it with me now. . . .VEGAS BABY!!

It occurred to me that I am an ancient 22 years old and I have never been to Vegas. (Well, there was that one time with Axel Rose and the entire cast of Cats, but that didn't count.) And since I am moving to the other side of the globe in a few months, and Emilie is going to start nursing school (she's the most adorable thing in her scrubs with her green stethoscope, I just want to pinch her little nursing cheeks) and Kelly works a lot (boo!!) and is going to law school soon, I thought we should have a last Tripod bash.

Many 3x3's will be drunk (dranken? drunken?). A 3x3 is a magical drunkness-inducing potion that one must drink only with one's two best pals, or one risks a life of beer goggles and holiday sweaters. It is made up of one part ice-cold Jager shot (the cold part's optional, really) and one part Coors Light. NOT! Bud Light, but Coors Light. And if you are a beer snob who refuses to drink Coors Light (Sarah!), then you are a boob. Go drink your complex beer in a pretentious tasting room and leave me to the joy of beer-flavored water.

Much time will be spent by the pool at our cheapy-cheap Marriott (thanks Kelly bean!!), so I've decided I shall lose 5 lbs before we go. This is difficult to do on a diet of fettucine alfredo and margaritas, but I shall prevail. Sadly, I will not be able to post many pictures of us having a fabulous time in Vegas, because I predict few will be fit for sober consumption. I will, however, be selling pictures of Kelly's ginormous breastseses to pay for airfare.

In other news, I will be re-commencing my fabulous fashion writing in the Santa Cruz Sentinel soon, this weekend most likely. Check back for the link, and be prepared to feel the urge to redo your entire wardrobe. Seriously. It's a documented phenomena. What, you don't believe me?

Pick Me Up

In case that last post left you feeling annoyed and grumpy, here are some pictures I took with my brand-new Kodak EasyShare LS743. Hope the adorable visage of Sid Vicious cheers you up.

Something Weird This Way Comes

I love random phone calls usually. Last night this boy whom I've met ONCE called me (he's a friend of a friend of an ex-booty call. Seriously.) Something about a party. My phone cut out halfway through which was fine because actually I was already in bed, but I wasn't going to admit that. (What, and let him think I'm a LOOOOSSSSEEERRR who goes to bed at 10:30 on Saturday night?) But he calls me back. AT FOUR FREAKING O'CLOCK IN THE MORNING. Who does that? I should have answered it with a loud, "I finally achieved sleep five minutes ago, DO YOU REALLY WANT TO WAKE ME UP RIGHT NOW?"

In a related story, a very easy and foolproof way to annoy me is to put an oversize muffler on your shitmobile. Do you really want to draw everyone's attention to the fact that you are driving a piece of shit car that is also VERY LOUD?

Time for some shopping.

Boys Without Balls

Tonight I have somehow committed myself to a drinking excursion with a friend of mine, we'll call him Seamus. Cause that name makes me laugh. So, Seamus is a very nice boy and means well, I'm sure. But menfolk who are "very nice" and "mean well" are the most boring and non-hot specimens of manhood. Seamus fits into the "boring" category. He's like a puppy dog, adorable but easily frightened. I'm always a little afraid he's going to wee on himself.

Thai Me Up

I'm moving to Thailand in two months. . . and I keep asking myself why. What would possess me to move from a happy and wealthy home in California, where the biggest challenge is convincing my parents that freelance writing is a real job, to a country known mainly for malaria, underage prostitutes, and a flourishing drug trade? What the hell, as long as there are no squat toilets. I have a lifelong fear of some large toothy animal, a crocodile perhaps, leaping out of the squat-toilet hole and biting off my bum. And for the rest of my life, whenever I want to get naked with someone, I'll have to tell them the reason I have no bum is that I was squatting over a squat-toilet hole and something large and toothy bit it off.