Memoirs Of An Evil Genius

The Book of Jobless

Oh, what do you know, I have a blog!

I'm being facetious.  I have been SO busy with my unemployment that it has been hard to find the time to update, LET ME TELL YOU.  So first?  KillerWorkout and his wife came to visit, and then Ulrich and I looked for an apartment of our very own, and then we went to Oregon for a conference (at which Ulrich spoke, and by the way it was the first time I have ever been to Oregon,) and then I went back home for a week for my nephew's birthday, and then Ulrich and I moved into our new apartment, and then Domino came to visit for about a week, and then my parents came to visit for a few days, and then I went to a family reunion with them, and then I FINALLY came home and had time to enjoy my lingering unemployment.

Oh, did I say "enjoy?"  Because I meant "bask in the mounting terror."  Like, the first couple weeks that you're out of work it is SO AWESOME.  Like, Paid Vacation awesome.  Like, sleep in and wake up whenever and watch some teevee and check the internets and then take a nap and watch some more teevee and maybe eat some bonbons and then watch teevee and then, OMG it's 3:00 in the morning, so you might as well go to bed, awesome.  And then it's all, "Well, okay, I'm pretty ready to pay the rent again," except that there are no more jobs ANYWHERE ON EARTH and so your unemployment just keeeeps onnnnn gooooooing.

And then it keeps going some more.  And you're like, "Oh, ha ha!  I remember this from last time when it got all bleak, and you got so desperate you were watching American Idol again, and then all of a sudden, right when things were at their darkest, you got that job that lasted two and a half years!" ("Before it ended when the company dissolved.")  But this shit ain't that shit.  THERE ARE NO JOBS ON EARTH.  I am going to have to get a job mining dirty ice on the moon, or making silver lamé bodysuits for space vixen armies on Venus, but even THEN I won't earn as much as the bombardier androids our robot overlords send to eradicate the earth menace.  Hopefully by then, though, I won't BE on earth, because my space vixen haberdashery business will be based extraterrestrially for the tax break benefits.

On the American Idol front, I would like you all to know that I have NOT been watching that this unemployment go-round.  Instead, I picked up 90210, Melrose Place, and even (gulp) The Vampire Diaries.  I mean, I have tried to quit Vampire Diaries SO many times, but for some reason it keeps coming back on my DVR like a bad, bad, poorly written penny.  OH YES, I SAID DVR INSTEAD OF TIVO because I have an HDTV but NOT an HD TiVo, so I am bound by FATE to a fucking DVR that SUCKS my ASS, SO MANY TIMES, and does not work for SHIT.  I tell it to record stuff and it doesn't, I tell it not to record stuff and yet it does, of course, and then it won't let me scroll through shit without catching and then STAB STAB STAB!

Vampire Diaries would be so much better if these dudes would all make out and stuff.  Just an observation.

Anyway, Ulrich and I have all kinds of travel plans for the future.  He's coming back home with me for Thanksgiving, (for which, apparently, my mother is giong to pull out ALL THE STOPS in order to host a brunch for every person I have ever known so they can meet Ulrich,) and then we're going overseas for Christmas and New Year's.  We are going to be in Scandinavia, which is going to be colder than SHIT, and then we are heading up to the ARCTIC CIRCLE, which is going to be colder than shit's NORTH POLE, for about a week.  But it's going to be awesome overall.

And anyway, what the hell else am I going to do with my jobless ass?

Someone Tell Pandora To Close Her Fucking Box Already

So I believe I have, several times now, promised to be more diligent with my updates. HA HA HA. Suckers. No, I’m kidding – it’s just been One Of Those Things. First you get really busy during the day at work, and then you go home and the last thing you want to do is “think”, so you just pour a glass of wine and turn on your stories and tell yourself you’ll update tomorrow. And then tomorrow comes and it’s a slow day, and you’re like, “fuck this BLOG shit, I’m going to play Scramble on Facebook for a few hours!” My life is so meaningless.

Actually, some big stuff has happened! My sister had her baby, and he is CUTE AS THE DICKENS. Seriously. So cute. With his big ol’ head and his little tiny fingers. Babies are lucky they’re so cute, because they’re not very good at hunting or gathering, or balancing a checkbook, and if they didn’t have the power to bring adults to their knees they probably wouldn’t get very far in life. Seriously, though, babies are like cynics’ Kryptonite. Their cuteness defies your wry observations about how rotten the world has become.

OH. While we’re on the topic of “how rotten the world has become,” did I mention that my company is shutting down? Because it is doing that. Our parent corporation decided that they “don’t want a production company anymore,” so they’re canceling our award-winning and long-running (MORE THAN A DECADE, PEOPLE) series and we’re all out on our asses by the end of Summer. So much fun! I get to be unemployed again, just like about a million other people in Los Angeles, against whom I get to compete for a continuously narrowing pool of jobs. Hooray. Can one survive on swallowing their own pride? Because that will be all I can afford to eat for WHO KNOWS HOW LONG.

Now, in the meantime they had put me on a two-hour special that is theoretically supposed to deliver at the end of June, giving me an out date of sometime in mid-July, and TODAY I found out that, oh, wait, they might be scrapping the project all together, which means…??? !!! @#!$%@! WTF? HA HA HA. HA! HA! HA! AM I FIRED OR WHAT?

No, seriously, that’s a question. I don’t know if that means I’m possibly going to be shitcanned any day now, or if this is a false alarm, or if they’ll move me onto something else for a while, or what. BUT (and here’s the thing,) I have been making plans with the specific knowledge that I was to have at least five more paychecks coming my way AND I WOULD LIKE THEM PLEASE THANK YOU.

Either way, I have seen the writing on the wall, and I am SINCERELY hoping that the writing says “This way to some more money!” With, like, a big arrow underneath pointing at a bunch of flour sacks with a $ emblazoned on them.

Quoth The Raven, "SNOOOOORE"

OH MY GOSH WHY HAVEN'T I UPDATED IN FOREVER?  It's because I've been busy.  And lazy.  Mostly lazy.  After that whole I Know Who Killed Me nonsense, I think I was scared off of media for a while.  Okay.  OKAY!  That's a lie.  A half-lie.  That was some seriously wrong-ass shit, though, y'all.  What man could love media after THAT?  I WAS busy, though, and all that shit.  I bought an HDTV!  (My life changed!)  I celebrated the new year by falling asleep at the bar!  (In my defense, I wasn't feeling well!)  I had a birthday!  (I am only as old as I feel, so STOP JUDGING ME, HOLLYWOOD!)

Actually, I (lately, anyway) put a lot of stock in that whole 'only as old as you feel' load of bullshit.  Because I don't FEEEEEL old, you know?  Then again, how exactly does one feel "old"?  You know?  No one feels old until they fall asleep at the bar on New Year's Eve, probably.  OH, WAIT.  No, but really, I'm not old.  Well, when I was 13 my current age seemed old, like OLD, but now that I'm my current age I still feel young.  Tra la la!  And then I go for a run and realize I need a knee brace, and I go stretch out BEFORE my run and pull a groin muscle, and then I'm FALLING ASLEEP AT THE BAR and I realize that age has a way of creeping up on you.

But I didn't mean this to be a Mortality post.  Frankly, I don't know what this was supposed to be about.  People got laid the fuck off at my job recently, and I managed to be not one of them, although the axe continues to fall all around me and I'm not sure that it's finished.  OMG, WHY AM I SO DEPRESSING?

Okay, here's something that's not depressing!  I made rosemary ice cream yesterday.  I know, it sounds weird, but I got the idea from a Taillevent recipe for basil ice cream, and I began thinking to myself that there were other "savory" flavors that could work really well.  Rosemary was the winner (narrowly beating cumin -- kidding!) (OMG, my neighbor, btw, is snoring like a fucking chipper-shredder and it's reverberating through the alleyway between us and our neighboring building in such a way that it sounds like the shifting of techtonic plates or something) and I coupled it with a little bit of honey, and it has this Middle Eastern/South Asian feel to it.  It's so delicious.

My neighbor is so loud.  Seriously.  It's almost funny, except for the loosening plaster.  Although it's better than all the creepy sex noises all my other neighbors make.  ALTHOUGH, speaking of loosening plaster, I need to get a handyman out here to deal with the fact that my bathroom ceiling is, like, caving the fuck in.  Someone needs to fix that shit.

Okay, my neighbor is now starting to sound like someone is a rubbing a balloon with a belt sander.  I am over this shit.  She's having a baby, incidentally.  Due sometime this month.  Know who else is having a baby this month?  My sister!  I'm going to be an uncle again!  For the fourth time.  But I'm so excited!  I'm going home and everything!  My nephew is excited about being a big brother, too -- when the baby comes, he's getting a toy train.  More than I got when I became a big brother, anyway.

Okay, it's time for me to go and put a pillow over my neighbor's face.  It's gone from balloon-and-belt-sander to angry-jaguar-choking-on-oily-rags and I need my beauty sleep.  If I'm not imprisoned, I'll try to check in soon!

Love,
Me

I Know Who Bored Me

I'm really just writing this to let everyone know I'm not dead and haven't forgotten about my blog.  I've been busy with work and drinking -- you know how that is -- and I just never seem to find the time to update anymore.  It's been a crowded few months, with Halloween (I was Zombie Roy Rogers!) (And a seventy-foot-tall 19th-Century French whore!) (And a Sexy Bag Lady, although everyone just assumed I was supposed to be Courtney Love,) the election, Thanksgiving, and now Christmas, and spare time has been in short supply.

Right now I'm at my parents house, having some wine and watching I Know Who Killed Me (sadly, I am not making an ironic joke) (well, maybe sort of, in the sense that I'm only watching it in the first place to be ironic) and it suddenly seems like the right time to...oh, I'm sorry, I love my parents' HD TV, if only because it enables you to see the deodorant caked on LiLo's armpit.  Thank you, technology.  When will they make a machine that will weed out movies like this entirely?  Then you can talk to me about artificial intelligence.

ANYWAY.  Lindsay Lohan just cannot seem to act at ALL in this movie.  She wasn't this bad in A Prairie Home Companion.  Right?  Maybe the general awfulness of the movie as a whole has something to do with it.  THE ROSE IS COMING FROM INSIDE THE CAR!  That joke would make sense if you'd seen the movie.  Which, I trust, you didn't.  OMG this movie is so bad.

So, Halloween came and went, and we all had a good time.  The election happened, and all of THAT farkakta nonsense came and went (just like Sarah Palin's career!  HI-yo!)  I went back home for Thanksgiving and got to see my nephew and some other people whose names I've forgotten, and then after a brief stint in LA, I'm back with my parents again!  I love the holidays, you guys.  I will be happy if I never have to fly anywhere ever again, since within the first forty-five minutes of the flight we hit turbulence so bad that people started swearing and praying out loud (okay, so that was mostly just me) and was afraid we were all going to fall dead to earth like a hale of comets over Barstow, but I do love actually BEING home for the holidays.

Lindsay Lohan is KILLING ME SOFTLY WITH HER BAD ACTING, Y'ALL.

Okay, I'm signing off for now.  I promise I'll be more attentive to your needs in the future.

My Apartment Is Built On An Ancient Indian Burial Ground, I Swear

OH MY GOSH I'M NOT DEAD I PROMISE! I know it's been two months since my last update, but things have been crazy. I was working on an episode of the show that went off the rails more often than the Chicago El, and it required copious amounts of me calling people and supervising last-minute changes to the script and the edit. That took a lot of energy, and then in my spare time I have been crazy-cat-lady obsessed with the Presidential race (like, unhealthy obsessed), and in my OTHER spare time (read: Ø) I have been attempting to do this thing where you hold a book (I know, what's that, but bear with me) up to your eyes and you look at the words and comprehend them mentally and gain some sort of knowledge or entertainment. It's like the internet, but it moves slower and you can't link to funny pictures of cats!

Anyway, I haven't been able to do that for a while. This past spring I focused my special crazy-cat-lady powers of obsession on my reading, because of that horrifying statistic that came out last year that the average American only reads 4 books in a year. FOUR! That seems so sad to me, but I started to realize that it's too easy to put something off and say you'll do it later, and then something much, much easier to do comes along and...well, there you are, not reading. Or, you know, updating your journal. JUST FOR INSTANCE. Right now I'm reading a fairly detailed history of Paris (the city) (although if you needed that addendum, you probably don't know me very well) and it just takes a lot of energy, time, and concentration, all of which are in short supply.

On the subject of Sarah Palin, allow me to just say...what? No, I'm sorry...what? Somebody actually said (online, where else?) that Sarah Palin would make "a good stepmom for America". I HAVE a stepmom already, thanks, and she's not a crazy-ass bible-thumping witch-hunting science-denying gay-hating spree-shopping town-bankrupting book-banning nutcase. She's also less likely to HUMILIATE HERSELF on -- no, you know what? Fuck it. It's not worth the effort. People who don't think Sarah Palin would be a national embarrassment in the SECOND-HIGHEST OFFICE IN THE COUNTRY are not going to be convinced by my little blog here. Although let me just say that we've had enough "folksy" in the White House, and now I'm ready for "erudite" and "competent". Done.

So, oh, a couple months ago when I was driving to work, an enormous, mechanized spider the size of a pot-bellied pig crawled out from under my sun visor and started coming right at me. I was so terrified I can't even tell you. It was huge. I mean, it was so big I could see sweat beading up on its forehead as it licked its chops and rubbed its little claws together. It meant to EAT ME and I was going 80mph down the highway. So I did what any rational person would do and I SCREAMED MY FOOL HEAD OFF. I screamed for about twenty minutes straight until one of my vocal cords snapped off like a rubber band and flew out onto the dashboard. When the spider tried to shinny down a strand of silk as thick around as a firehouse pole RIGHT TOWARDS MY FACE, I opened the window, hoping it would get sucked out.

It did not get sucked out.

No, instead, the wind now beating in through the open window caused the spider to swing back and forth violently on its pole, which was obviously going to break at any second, landing the forty-pound nuclear Chernobyl Godzilla movie reject arachnid IN MY LAP, so I immediately shut the window and resumed screaming. FINALLY, the spider gave up trying to eat me, and crawled into my backseat, where I lost track of it. I haven't seen it in six weeks, but I know he's still in there.

As if THAT weren't bad enough, Argyle and I began to notice an increase in creepy crawlies in the apartment. At first it was just the occasional roach -- gross, but sort of inevitable in Los Angeles during the summer -- but pretty soon it was roaches galore, and then these weird beetles, and then these moths, and pretty soon it was all Phenomena in our apartment, and we were racing from room to room on tiptoe with cans of bug spray like a couple of fairy death-squad rangers, squealing every fifteen seconds and launching a cloud of poison into the air. AND THEN. One morning, Ulrich discovered a THING on my bedroom floor. I did not have my glasses on, so I couldn't see what it was, but he assured me that it was "a very big roach" and asked me what he should do. I shrugged and sort of sleepily suggested that we get rid of it. I didn't know exactly what he meant though, because I couldn't see any roaches behind the enormous blurry THING in the middle of the floor. Well, Ulrich tried wacking at the THING with a shoe, and it sort of stirred grumpily and swatted back. WELL.

I got up and fetched a little cup and some cardboard, because I was going to grab the roach and toss it outside. (I don't LIKE to kill things, even if they do have an unfair amount of legs.) I put on my glasses and stepped back into the bedroom, and there was a roach the size of a THIRD GRADER sitting on my floor. I mean, this thing...it was like something out of Naked Lunch. It had this mean expression and a pair of brass knuckles and a mohawk, and I swear it had that crazy Mike Tyson face tattoo, and I squealed like a little girl. Realizing I had brought a plastic cup to a gun fight, I ran back to the kitchen for reinforcements. Ulrich was suggesting I throw it into the toilet and flush it, but I wasn't sure it was going to fit. I finally managed to trap it in this big old Tupperware bin, and I was frantically trying to decide where to dispose of it when Argyle came FLYING out of her room like a Valkyrie with a can of Raid, letting out this unearthly battle cry, and I barely managed to jump out of the way before she turned the hose on that bloated motherfucker.

My fellow prisoners, I have never witnessed that kind of carnage in my life. It was thrashing and twitching and hooting and clicking and speaking in tongues, and we flushed the SHIT out that thing. We sent it to a watery (hopeful) grave, somewhere in the sewer system of greater LA County. My advice to you is to LOOK BEFORE YOU SIT from now until eternity, because that thing is going to come popping out like a demonic jack-in-the-box as soon as it finds a way back to civilization.

Okay, hopefully that entry makes up for my absence. I'm on my home to enjoy the weekend, now, and I suggest you all do the same. Peace.

Happy Anniversary! Pass Me The Bone Saw.

Yesterday marked Ulrich's and my three-year anniversary. We always try to make a something of a big deal out of our anniversary (and, I mean, why not?) so we plan stuff out in advance and observe little traditions and so forth. Of course the fun fact is that I'm not as good at making a big deal out the Big Deals as I am at making a big deal out of nothing, but I digress. We have traditions, we like expensive food and wine, and we had a reason to enjoy both. Now, for those of you who remember, I need not explain how we met. But shut up and listen anyway, because I have to explain it to everyone else:

Ulrich and I both worked at the same company for a time (that time being three years ago), and we would notice each other in passing, as you do. I was too chicken to say anything, but one day he stopped me in the hall and asked me if he smelled as bad as everyone said. Kidding! He asked my name. I told him and asked his name, and then had to wrap my English-speaking brain around a brand new set of Northern European vowel sounds, which he insists was charming. I'm lucky that incompetence is charming, frankly, or I would get nowhere in life. Fact.

Anywho, long story a little less long, we decided to go out to lunch. Now, we were working deep in the rectum of Southern California (read: The Valley [eeeeeek!]) and our choices were limited. We ended up at this awful Chinese restaurant that was basically the only thing close enough to the office so we could walk to it without collapsing from heat stroke and baking like a Tarte Tatin in the FOUR MILLION DEGREE SUMMER HEAT. Anyway, the food was bad but the company was good, the rest is history.

These days, to commemorate, we recreate our first date every year. So we get in the car and drive out to The Valley [eeeeeek!], and have a mediocre lunch and a fond memory, and so forth. Well, this year there was a little fly in the ointment:

When we got in my car, it started making a horrible noise that only got worse when I tried to make a left turn. I drove all the way to The Valley [you get the idea!] with terror in my heart, convinced my engine was going to bail out port-side, all, "This shit sounds scary -- feet don't fail me now!" Well, when we got to the restaurant, it turned out that the plastic spatter-guard in my wheel well had somehow come loose and was dragging against the tire. So after an EXTREMELY unsatisfying lunch (I cannot stress enough how awful this food was -- our palates have been spoiled, I suppose, because I would rather have eaten the spatter-guard) we had to go and buy a pair of heavy-duty garden shears to remove the plastic piece from the wheel well. Only the shears didn't work, so then we had to go buy a heavy-duty, carbon-blade pocket saw to hack through it. It took us nearly twenty minutes in the unforgiving heat of the VALLEY OF THE SUN to cut that thing loose. We were sweaty, filthy, and nauseous when we finally wrenched the guard out and threw it in the trash.

So we decided that next year we're not going for Chinese again. I mean, we actually had a great afternoon, and it was rather amusing to both of us that we had to spend our anniversary SAWING OFF A PIECE OF MY CAR, but still. Next year I think we'll take a cab to a movie. Maybe.

"It's all true or my name isn't Sophia Pe-...Hawkins."

Okay, so it's been a LONG TIME since I last updated, and I want to apologize. It's been a bad few weeks, and the shit has been left, right, and sideways ALL OVER THE FAN at work. I mean, I'm in there with a squeegee and a fire hose trying to get shit off the fan every day, and it's left me without a lot of time to update. Right now, for example, the field shoot we had planned for Friday is lying at my feet, bleeding from a gunshot to the head, but it's more or less beyond the point of help now. So I can take a few minutes!

...and talk about sad shit. Y'all...Estelle Getty died today. I'm actually really bummed about it, too. Not because it was a big surprise -- she'd been sick for a long time, and she was 84 after all -- but because she has a special place in my gay little heart, thanks to Golden Girls. I mean, I used to watch that show all the time with my mom, so it also kind of marks the inevitable passage of time as we all get older and blah blah blah. Anyway, tonight I'm going to get drunk and eat cheesecake with Ulrich and Argyle while we watch a marathon of Sophia Petrillo's best episodes. Here's to your memory, Estelle.

Also, I am seriously considering moving to Switzerland where I will live in a tiny cottage and make cheese or wine or textiles and never speak to another human being again. WHY IS WORK SO AWFUL? I'm sick of getting barked at over shit I can't control, and getting goaded by my producer into pissing people off, because HE doesn't give a shit if I get my ass reamed by some lady on the other side of the country who sounds like an incest baby with a cleft palate for "ignoring protocol" as long as HE gets his results. Which, of course, he DOESN'T get, because after pissing off Cleft Palate Lady, we are shuffled to the bottom of the pile, our shoot gets a double-tap to the head, AND THEN IT DIES IN MY ARMS.

This is only the latest in a long line of bullshit problems we've been having, and it's pushing me to the edge. It is also turning me into an alcoholic, because every time the message light on my phone blinks, I think to myself, "I NEED A GLASS OF WINE." And then I look at the clock and it's 10am, and I'm like, "ONLY EIGHT MORE HOURS TO GO! MAYBE I'LL MAKE THAT TWO GLASSES." One of these days I'm going to actually get a lunch break again, and then I'm going to get into trouble.

Sigh. But I'm trying not to turn this into my bitchfest-about-work, because I've been there and done that already. It's therapeutic, if not productive. Anyway, hope everyone is doing okay. Watch some Golden Girls tonight for Estelle Getty and get drunk for me.

The Strangers

This past weekend I was in Boise, Idaho (my first time!) for a cousin's wedding. I was actually really impressed by how beautiful it was there. Low-key, of course -- I mean, there were far less helicopters and police blockades and gun-wielding maniacs than in my current neighborhood -- but you can't really hold it against them. Anyway, the weather was beautiful, I got to spend time with some of my extended family, and four weirdos picked me up in the bar at my hotel, so it really had all the earmarks of a successful weekend.

I shouldn't say "picked up", because that makes it sound salacious. It wasn't salacious. It was just...bizarre. Anyway, the story is this: the wedding wrapped up and I was hustled to my hotel by midnight, which for me was 11pm, and I was totally not tired at all. So I picked up my book and went down to the bar. Argyle teased me for reading at the bar, but dude? Remember that this is Idaho we're talking about. Anyway, book + dirty martini = :) So I'm reading my book and enjoying my martini, and this shitfaced quartet -- three girls, one dude -- belly up to the bar and start gabbing amongst themselves.

I am from time to time a shameless eavesdropper. I can't explain it, but ever since about the fourth grade I have gotten endless enjoyment out of other peoples' conversations. But only if they don't know I'm listening. Sometimes (read: often) people will have "outrageous" conversations when they suspect (read: hope) other people are listening, and that is excruciatingly tiresome. As soon as someone says to me any of the following dreaded phrases, I write their name down on my list of People Who Suck:

"We're kind of weird!" -- You're NOT weird. You're just like everyone else. Everybody has quirky conversations with their friends, but many of them do not publicly pat themselves on the back for it. Shut up.

"We're probably scaring you, aren't we?" -- No. No, you are not "scaring" me, you are depressing me, both because you clearly wish for me to be scared (by how weird you are) and because you think that being scary-weird makes you somehow a more interesting person, and there is a difference.

"I hope we're not SHOCKING you!!1!" -- Yes you do.

Deliver us from Life Performers. Anyway, these people were so fucked up they had no idea I was paying any attention to them, which made them hilarious. Also, I was pretty fucked up after the wine I had at the wedding and the dirty martini (which I got for FREE, because when I want to I can apparently charm a bartender with the best of them!)(or, possibly, he was leering at the drunk girls and didn't realize that he never charged me.) so for me to notice how drunk THEY were...well, it tells you a lot about How Drunk They Were.

So, in a move that is rather out of character for me, I ingratiated myself with the subjects of my study and we yakked for a time about this and that before I decided it was really time for me to go to bed. We all ended up leaving at the same time, and once we got on the elevator, they invited back to their room for an "after party".

I should have said no. I mean, CLEARLY. But I was drunk and amused, and I said to myself, "Self - this is a story you will be able to write about on your blog," and that clinched it. So there I was, sitting in a chair in some weird peoples' hotel room while they smoked pot and ate sandwiches and tried to force-feed me Babybel cheese, and as I was sobering up by this point I started to play MY favorite game when I meet strangers, which I like to call Make Shit Up. So I gave them a fake name and a fake background, and I told them I was 23, and that I was in a band, and as I was talking I started to think to myself that they actually really and truly were starting to freak me out, and I wished I had just gone up to bed, and I started worrying about how I could gracefully extricate myself. And then, when I was in the middle of a sentence, the dude decided it was time for everyone to go to bed, and literally pushed me out into the hall and closed the door in my face.

I didn't wait around to see if this was a joke, or if someone would open the door in a moment to apologize -- I turned and ran for the fucking elevator. I did not see them the next day, OR EVER AGAIN, and this was exactly as it should be.

The moral of the story, obvs, is DON'T TALK TO STRANGERS.

Damn You, Facebook!

ULRICH AND I DID NOT BREAK UP. DO NOT BELIEVE FACEBOOK'S HYPE. AGAIN.

I Slept With My Sister-in-Law!

That got your attention! OMG, it's been like a MONTH since I last updated. I'm sorry, y'all. I was really busy, and then I was less busy but TOTALLY distracted by other things...anyway, I'm here now to make it all better.

So, my little brother got married. I had to give a speech, which I agonized about for months, but it all went really well in the end and I got to know some of his friends -- a double-sided prospect, to be sure. They were all really funny, but they were also really DUDE-ly, you know? What I mean to say is that my efforts to fit in were both clunky and obvious when they were talking as a group, but I got along very well with them as individuals. Good thing we have alcohol, the Great Equalizer.

Anyway, KillerWorkout is something of a traditionalist. He insisted on tuxedos for the men and a gown for the bride, and some of the other trimmings and trappings that go along with it. For example, he didn't want to see his fiancée the night before the wedding. This meant she had to GO somewhere, and my mother thoughtfully offered the other twin bed in my room. While I was also sleeping there. Bear in mind here that there are two (2) other guest rooms as well as THREE (3!) couches and a (1!!) pull-out sofa she could have used. The intricacies of my mother's mind are myriad and impossible to fathom, but I have to wonder if she wasn't dipping into a bit of her own Great Equalizer at the time.

Anyway, this led to much ribaldry on behalf of the groomsmen, who teased my brother because his wife slept with the best man on the eve of their nuptials. The joke is increased further because the maid of honor sorta kinda accidentally signed the marriage certificate in the bride's spot. So he almost married the maid of honor and his fiancée sort of slept with the best man, and that's the only kind of wedding I ever expect to be involved with, quite frankly, which leads me to ANOTHER exciting story!

Remember Pussy Galore? And how she was going to get married, but then had to postpone it because she got preggers? And then they picked a date, and she asked me to be her man of honor, and she chose a dress, and I started planning a bachelorette party? Well, she got knocked up again and they've had to postpone it a second time. I told her she needs to STOP HAVING SEX. Or whatever it is she's doing. Seems like you just have to say the word "wedding" and she comes down with a case of the babies. This will be number THREE (3!!!) and she hasn't even made it past the church door yet. At least she knows she's fertile, right? I mean, that's a good thing?

Anyway, work has stabilized greatly over the past couple of weeks, which is why I have the liberty to write this now. I have some great pictures to share as well, because I FINALLY bought a new digital camera! I just have to figure out how it works. This could be tricky because of my deficiency in understanding technical mumbo-jumbo, and my aversion to "reading instructions".

Wow! This "writing my blog" thing has been a really refreshing change of pace! I'll have to do more of it. Just...don't hold your breath, I guess.