hot pants

I have to admit, it's been a long time since someone was able to trump my stories with the best story ever. This courtesy of Jeffy while we were at the counter discussing the worst thing a partner could do. I know it won't be as funny me telling it here.

A guy who worked for Jeffy has a wife that, I assume due to the story, has a problem with yeast infections. So the wife sees some show on TV one morning that recommended that women who are prone to yeast infections put their underwear in the microwave for a few minutes before putting them on (this apparently is true: www.ehow.com/how_7838_cure-vaginal-infections.html ).

So the wife put her underwear in the microwave and then went to take a shower. I guess she didn't realize that you can't put underwear with little metal studs on it in the microwave. I can't remember the exact details of what happened next because I was laughing, but I believe the microwave either blew up or caused a short, which then caused the house to catch fire. The fucking thing burned to the ground. The guy was at work and his wife is lucky she made it out of the house alive.

It took a while for the guy to sheepishly admit to Jeffy what caused the fire. We both agreed that was the worst thing we could think of that a partner could do.

nixon & honey arm

I went to see frost-nixon with Jeffy yesterday. I was bribed into going with the promise that we would be seated in the VIP section of the theater. We had reclining seats and a waitress to bring us drinks. One of the advantages of hanging out with Jeffy is he knows how to roll.

I got to the theater a little late due to traffic. Jeffy was standing in the lobby and started waving something on a lanyard at me when I walked in. I was like "Dude, you found my ski pass!!!" He looked at me for a moment and then was like "You're an idiot," after which he clonked me on the head and then gave me my movie pass. Which, in my defense, looked like a ski pass.

During the movie there is a scene of Nixon jogging in place in his house in California. Since Jeffy's treadmill recently went tits up, a situation he is super sensitive about since he loves to run, I thought it best to lean over and whisper to him "Hey! You don't need a treadmill. Just run in place like that!"

Which is why, at dinner later that night, upon discovering that an apricot sauce that came with some fried pickles we ordered had honey in it, he was tempted to write "help me!" on my arm with the aforementioned sauce, as I was looking at the menu trying to decide if I really wanted onion rings or not. He might have gotten away with his little scheme if he hadn't asked me, so innocently, "So, um, if you get honey on your skin, what happens? Do you, uh, look like that little girl from the exorcist?"

He was bitter about not only the Nixon comment, but also about the fact that we took my car to dinner and I almost ran out of gas. We were sitting at a red light, with a gas station in sight, and he said "if you fucking run out of gas now I am going to go back to the theater, get my car, and run you over". He has an FJ. Ouch.

The restaurant we ate at is called the counter. It was quite good. I had a hamburger (was going to order the veggie burger but Jeffy kept going "pussy, pussy, pussy, order the beef you fucking pussy") with cranberries, cheddar cheese, some green stuff, and an onion marmalade. Then I drove Jeffy back to his car, almost accidentally driving down the wrong side of the street because I was distracted by Jeffy's iPhone, prompting him to almost have a coronary. But, all made it home safe.

And it was fun.

rejected

Well, my first "rejected" email of the year. On to the next publisher.

the most embarrassing dad

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2009/0106091vail1.html

And that's one more reason why I probably won't ski Vail during the weekends...

Anterooms

Out of the snowdrift
Which covered it, this pillared
Sundial starts to lift,

Able now at last
To let its frozen hours
Melt into the past

In bright, ticking drops.
Time so often hastens by,
Time so often stops-

Still, it strains belief
How an instant can dilate,
Or long years be brief.

Dreams, which interweave
All our times and tenses, are
What we can believe:

Dark as they are, yet plain,
Coming to us now as if
Through a cobwebbed pane

Where, before our eyes,
All the living and the dead
Meet without surprise.

-Richard Wilbur

check

I just sent off my book proposal to my publisher.

Stressed with the potential response, especially since my last communique with aforementioned publisher involved me threatening (from what I remember) to kick him in the balls.

But fuck, I had to do it, it was on my list.

Fingers crossed.

copper day with Jeffy

After a stressful day on Saturday, when my flight from Cincy to Denver was cancelled, and then rescheduled, and cancelled again, so I ended up on a Delta instead of United flight, having also lost my first class seat and having to sit between two fat people with a shit head of a kid behind me who cried the entire 3 hour flight, I got up at 4 am to meet Jeffy for my first day of skiing.

The day started out not so auspiciously as I couldn't get onto I-70, the intersection near my house having been closed for police activity. Then we got to copper and it was fucking cold. But, the day got better almost immediately.

Jeffy took me to the surefoot store to get custom made ski boots. Given the amount of problems I have with my knee I figured it was a good investment. While we waited for the lifts to open I got measured for orthotics. You have to stand on this metal thing and then these black worm looking stalks come out of the metal thing and measure your foot. They had to measure my right foot 3 times to get an accurate reading for some reason. Then we went to the ticket counter where I procured a $40 discount on Jeffy's lift ticket. I said "and that's why you keep the jew around" to make him laugh.

Then we headed up mountain. Jeffy tried to give me some coaching on skiing. First he noticed that I pick up my right ski all the time. He would carve a turn down the mountain, with his two perfect lines from his edges, and then I would try to follow. But I was making ghost lines with my right ski because I kept picking it up. I think I do that because I don't have much feeling in my right foot and I'm afraid I'm going to catch an edge and wrench my knee, causing all the titanium screws holding my leg together to come shooting out, then all the tendons to pop out like octopus tentacles. They'd never find my knee cap in the snow.

After a few runs, and also determining my foot wasn't sitting properly in my boot, Jeffy suggested we go back to surefoot to finish getting my boots made. I asked if he thought I would suck less with new boots and he said "I hope so". He also said he wished he had brought his camera so he could take pictures of me that he could look at when he needed a laugh.

So when we returned to surefoot Nick, my boot maker, made me sit in a chair while he put these little toe hats on my feet. Then he put my legs in these plastic baggie things and crammed the whole mess inside my new ski boot, which had a bunch of tubes sticking out of it. I was like "Hmm. This reminds me of chemo." Nick said "There's nothing that's going to poke or cut you," and then moments later gouged a huge chunk of skin out of his hand on one of my boot bindings.

After I was packed into the boots I had to stand on this metal platform while Nick fed foam into the various tubes coming out of my boots. It was kind of like having my foot stepped on by a giant who then decided to pee on it for good measure. I had to endure this process for 30 minutes, while Jeffy stood at the front of the shop trying to do things to make me laugh while simultaneously laughing at my discomfort. Towards the end the pain was so bad in my right foot from the compression I seriously thought I was going to pass out. I kept apologizing to Jeffy for taking so long since I was cutting into ski time and he kept saying "well, that's why we keep the jew around".

Then Nick tried to mount my new boots onto my skis but they were so much smaller than my old ones (explains the heel lift problem I was having) I had to get the bindings remounted. That ended up being another little adventure involving me getting yelled at for running through the snow in my socks, prompting more "and that's why we keep the jew around" comments.

Finally, after getting my skis fixed up, and having a beer, we returned to the mountain for some more runs. Unfortunately my new boots were so tight in the toe they were almost unbearable to wear, kind of like skiing in a climbing shoe, but I did my best to ski in them for the rest of the afternoon. Jeffy kept saying we should take them in again, but I was having enough fun to block the pain and didn't want to spend anymore time in a shop.

We kept talking about how the economy is not going to get better for a while, a big concern of Jeffy's since he's thinking to retire soon. He just sold a nail polish company that he owned, so he kept saying "well, at least I have 8,000 bottles of nail polish" after telling me stories like how he lost $2 million dollars this year.

We also discussed his book. He paid a guy in Vegas $20 k to ghost write it and the guy hasn't done shit. So I lobbied to be his new ghost writer and I think he's going to take me on, especially when I pointed out to him that everything we do when we hang out together can be written off on taxes. So he's working up an outline this week and we'll see what happens. I've put together two proposals for other books I'm working on, so I may be writing a lot this year.

Jeffy is a great friend in that he has a lot of patience. Even when I lost my ski pass he didn't complain (it fell off my lanyard somehow). He also was a helpful ski coach and only once yelled at me, saying "If you pick that right ski up one more time I'm going to break your fucking foot off". He also pointed out to me that my shoulders and my hips are normally going in two opposite directions when I ski, prompting him to wonder "how could you have so many black friends and not have any rhythm?" He also tried to get me into the rail park, but then changed his mind when he remembered that I (re)broke my hand last year skiing.

His best comment, while discussing our friend J who recently became not a lesbian anymore, was "If you're going to date a girl, you should date one that's bisexual. That way you know she's with her girlfriend when she's not with you, instead of being off fucking some other guy".

As we were driving home I tentatively mentioned to Jeffy that I might be considering dating people again. Jeffy, whom I've known for 3 years now, looked over at me long enough to almost rear end the car in front of us. Then he said "Are you out of your goddamn mind? The LAST person on this planet that should be going on dates IS YOU!" He also pointed out I could benefit from adult supervision in most of my personal affairs. Point taken.

We are going to get together again some time this week to check out a new wine bar/movie theater, where he will be bringing a wine from his cellar called The Dead Arm shiraz. Any alcohol with the word "dead" in the title promises to be entertaining.

snoopy snake attack

While working at my mom's desk in her office the other day, I noticed this Snoopy art thing that she had sitting in the middle of her desk. It's from an art show done in St. Paul to raise money for a program called Doghouse Days of Summer. The purpose of the program is/was to do an artistic tribute to Charles M. Schultz, who drew the cartoon.

But as I looked at the figurine, I noticed something weird. There seemed to be a snake coming out of Snoopy's dog house (see pic - I put a red border around the snake). "Mom, how come this snake is attacking Snoopy?" I asked.

"There isn't a snake attacking Snoopy. Where do you come up with the crazy things you say?" she replied, typing away at an email. I turned the dog house around. "Then what is THAT?" I said, pointing to the red thing coming out of his dog house.

"It's a scarf" she said, without even turning from her monitor to look at me.

"Since when do scarves have eyes and a big mouth?" I asked.

My mom finally turned around and looked at me over her bifocals. "Let's practice being really quiet by you not speaking for the next 15 minutes" she said.

I left her office to get some more hot water for my tea, and started making inquiries of her colleagues (I was able to wander around the building, as I mentioned before, with my mom's badge). It turns out I'm not the only one who wondered what the hell that thing is at the foot of Snoopy's dog house. "I think it's a monkey" said one of her less intelligent co-workers. When my mom brought it in some people went as far as to do research on the web to see if they could determine what the stupid red thing might be, but no one has gotten an answer.

So, if anyone knows what that thing is, please advise via a comment to this blog. If you want more detailed pictures I can provide them. The figurine is called "Breaktime!" and it's by the artist Simon Foshey

no pants in newport

My dad grew up in a rough neighborhood in Cleveland and was quite the hooligan. He and my uncle used to steal cars and do other illegal stuff. But he ended up getting an engineering scholarship to Case Western and his freshman year in college was supposed to be on the straight and narrow.

Except that, he joined a fraternity. To give you an idea of how rough a city Cleveland was back then, he joined the honor student fraternity, where he was constantly hazed by older students, even though this fraternity is normally the refuge of geeks. This physicist, who was a junior, kept harassing my dad, who quickly got sick of his bullshit.

So, with a few other fraternity brothers, my dad developed a plot one evening to kidnap and drive this physicist to Newport, Kentucky (5 hours away from the university). Back then Newport was a shit town full of prostitutes and drug dealers. When they got the guy to Newport they were going to dump him out on the street with no pants on, leave him there, and drive back to Case. I asked my dad if he thought that might be unsafe. And my dad said "I didn't think about that. I just wondered how he would solve the problem." As if being in a shit town with no pants on was a differential equation or something.

The frat brothers threw this poor physicist in the trunk of a Buick and took off. The Buick was burning oil so the bumper was covered in residue. When they got to Newport my dad let the guy out of the trunk, and, having had a change of heart, talked him into stealing street signs instead of taking his pants and leaving him there.

My dad climbed up some water tower thing and took a sign. The rest of the guys stole street signs. Then all the frat brothers piled back in the car, with the stolen signs in the trunk, and headed back to Case. Unfortunately the physicist, fearing my dad would change his mind again and throw him in the trunk, wrote "help I'm being kidnapped" on the Buick bumper right before they left.

Around 2 in the morning my dad was pulled over for speeding. Then the cop saw the kidnap message on the back of the bumper and made everyone get out of the car. He handcuffed my dad because the physicist started yelling "He wanted to kidnap me!!!" He was a little pussy who didn't want to get in trouble. As my dad stood there in his handcuffs the cop opened the trunk and saw the signs.

In the end my dad got out of jail time by agreeing to do community service. The physicist graduated early. And no one ever messed with my dad again.

train yard

After we got done at the aquarium my dad wanted to go check out the railway museum of greater Cincinnati. It's in a very bad part of town, and it was freezing outside. But, I do like trains. So we got there and it turns out it's only open two days a week, and one of the days happened to be yesterday.

We paid our admission even though the yard was deserted. I went through the locomotive and the caboose, which were the only cars open. My dad was talking to my brother on his blackberry, and I was bored, so I decided to climb on top of a milk car. At the top of the milk car I announced that I really, really wanted to go into one of the Pullman cars that were also in the yard.

As if by magic, a guy showed up. He said he was working as a restorer of the trains. He offered to let us go into a Pullman car. My dad looked at me incredulously. Yeah, all I have to do is wish for something and poof it appears (this pic was from the top of the milk car, notice my right sleeve of my jacket is still soaking wet).

We went into the first Pullman car, called the Jovita. Our guide couldn't remember the combo for the lock to get on the porch thing so we had to climb over some stuff to get up there. The car, built in the 19 teens, was used in the movie 8 Men Out, and the train scene was even filmed in the yard of the train museum. Before the Pullman was retired and donated it was used to haul circus performers around.

Then we went into another Pullman car, called the Overdale, which was even fancier than the Jovita. It had beautiful wood work and light fixtures. It was built in the 1940s. I felt like I was in the movie North by Northwest, except that when I watch that movie I'm at home on my sofa with a blanket, rather than being in a train yard in a bad neighborhood with a wet jacket freezing my ass off (this pic taken inside the Overdale).

Our final stop on the tour was to a locomotive. Our guide pulled all the panels off so I could see the pistons, the fuel tank, the cranks, and the brakes. We were about 12 feet off the air standing on this pretty narrow platform so my dad was getting a little nervous that I was going to fall. And we looked at the wheels and the rails.

I think the guy wanted to take us through an Amtrak train they had just gotten but my dad walked out the gated area and was like "thanks for the tour!" So the guy went back to what ever he was doing and I followed my dad to the car and cranked the heat up to 80 degrees.

If you are curious, it costs about $70,000 to move a train car. Most train cars weigh about 6 to 7 tons. If you have a train to donate, Amtrak will take it, but you have to meet all their safety and quality requirements.

into a shark tank...an adventurous new year's eve

Yesterday, new year's eve, I finally convinced my dad to take me to Newport aquarium.

The aquarium has a display where you go into this room and stand on a metal floor which shakes around. In front of you is a projected image of bars and a great white. It is supposed to simulate cage diving. They missed a lot of the more interesting details, such as the cold and the way you can smell blood from the chum but there were a lot of kids having fun with it. I gave an impromptu talk about great whites until parents started pulling their kids away from me (guess they didn't think me encouraging them to go see great whites was a good idea).

We saw a really flat frog called the African Clawed Frog. It's the only frog with clawed toes and it looks like it's been run over by a car. It has a small head, no eyelids, and no tongue. There was also a Burmese python that weighed over 500 lbs and was 25 feet long. Horrifying. And when we went into the aviary two birds dive bombed my hat. The little kid behind me was like "they're going to poop on your head!" But they pooped on his dad instead. Ha.

There was a display with crocodiles hanging out on a front porch with a bunch of reindeer. Weird. And a santa in the shark tank so people could stand next to the tank and get their picture taken with underwater santa, who had a sleigh being pulled by two plastic sea horses that appeared to be scavenged from a trailer park in Miami. It kind of distracted from the sharks but I tried to not look at it.

Then we got to my favorite part of any aquarium, the shark petting pool. I displaced some annoying little boys and leaned over to look into the pool. There were three asian tourists standing next to me, a man and

two women, and they watched as I leaned over the pool to touch a shark. There was this beautiful little leopard shark that swam towards the surface when I put my fingers in the pool and I was able to pet the full length of him. I tried to get my dad to pet a shark but he said "No, I think they snap at people." I petted a pajama catshark because she looked traumatized. Then a lesser sand shark came by me and I tried to pet her, but, not realizing how deep the petting pool was, I accidentally stuck my arm in up to my elbow and then almost toppled over the wet kid sized railing into the pool (picture to the left taken by my dad moments before I almost fell in - you can see how deep my hand is in the water - the lesser sand shark is in the top right corner, and the pajama catshark is coming back by my hand to be pet again). The asian visitors were taking pictures of me so that was a little embarrassing. And my jacket kind of smells now.

But, one of the asian women finally got up the nerve to pet a shark. And then she looked at me and said "It's feeling nice!" I hope she goes back to her country and starts speaking out against definning and using shark cartilage as an aphrodisiac.

working with my mom

Since I worked with my dad yesterday, and my mom is retiring this week, I decided to come into work with her today.

It was a different day than yesterday. We arrived at the office and people were waiting for my mom to get in so they could ask her a million stupid questions. I set my laptop up in the corner of her office so I could stay out of everyone’s way. Annoying. And then she had to go to a meeting every 5 minutes practically. People kept coming into her office while she was gone asking where she was and when she might be back. As if my mom was telling me any details about where she was going or what she was doing.

I got to meet a number of her colleagues who all have single sons. I had my picture taken 5 times by parents who thought I might make a good girlfriend. Ugh. One guy followed me around with his cell phone camera trying to get action shots. His son is 22. Yeah. Done dating young dudes.

The best part of the day was sneaking around the bank building with my mom’s ID. I couldn’t believe how lax the security was in her building.

The not fun part of the day was being followed around by the "recycling guy", Bob, who looks like a serial murderer. I was sitting in my mom's office by myself and he came in to get some candy. He saw me and he was like "Hiiiiiiiii" in this weird low voice like he was Dracula or something. I tried to ignore him but then he was like "where's Maaaaary?" I was thinking to myself, why, do you want to lock her in your basement, but I was nice and told him I had no idea. I finally closed my mom's door so he would stop coming by.

I would also like to note that my mom said we would leave work early to go to the wine store but instead we stayed late. I was like dude, you're RETIRING and she was like "oh well, [some annoying developer] just sent me an email and I have to respond". Then I realized, ech, I do the same thing. So now I'm going to stop doing that because I know how annoying it is.

working with my dad

Monday I was “working at home” at my parents’ house. My dad decided to stay home and “work” with me. This ended up being not very productive because my dad felt the need to interrupt me every 15 minutes while I was trying to work on a network concept diagram to ask me questions.

His first question had to do with what I wanted for breakfast. This was a trick, because he was trying to get me to make him breakfast. I told him I wasn’t hungry so he decided to stand at the kitchen table, where I had my temporary office set up, crunching cashews really loud and wondering if I didn’t want to make some oatmeal because he would eat some too.

He was also obsessing about going to Trader Joe’s so after breakfast time came and went he decided to ask me every 15 minutes if I might want to go to Trader Joe’s. Then lunch time came and he asked me what I was having for lunch. I finally broke down and went to the refrigerator and handed him a bag of cooked chicken and told him to have that. Then he said he needed something to go with it. I handed him a Tupperware container full of red beans and rice and watched him stand there holding it for a full minute before breaking down and putting it in the microwave for him.

The food kept him occupied for about a half hour, and then, right as I was joining a conference call, he came out of his office and started mouthing “Trader Joe’s” to me, so after the conference call I went into his office and said “Okay, let’s go.” He glared at me and said “I’m in the middle of working on something right now.”

We ended up going for a 7 mile hike in the late afternoon, and then going to Trader Joe’s where we were supposedly only going to buy more oatmeal. We ended up buying cheese and chocolate because my mom won’t buy either, and now that I’m here my dad can pretend it’s for me, even though I don’t really eat either. We also got some really good wines. I am sorry to report that the French coconut sorbet is no longer carried by Trader Joe’s, and that was the main reason I wanted to go shopping there. But we did find some nice lemon tarts.

I was reminded yesterday of being a little kid and going into work with my dad. He used to even bring me to meetings where I would take notes (this at the age of 8). I also would sit by a computer and feed punch cards into it, type up his papers (I learned to type when I was 6), and file things which was fun because the filing system had a wheel that you had to turn to open the passageway to get to where the files were. For doing a few hours of work I would get a huge gumball out of this dispenser that was in the lobby of the building where he worked. I thought it was the best thing ever.

A year ago he brought me into his current office. I had to get a badge so I made a weird face when the lady took my picture so I would seem to be a person whose eyeballs were falling out. In my dad’s office he had a picture of my ex boyfriend but none of my family. We went to this engine museum where my dad was treated with a lot of deference from the staff. They looked on in horror as I did things like ask him “Dad, what kind of engine is that?” pointing to a Christmas tree. He dared me to climb on an engine, which I did while he distracted the guard by giving him a cup of shit coffee he had gotten at the badge office and decided not to drink.

The whole point of going to the museum was to steal cookies that were for visiting dignitaries. My dad shoved them into my bag. I was just an innocent bystander.

tammy faye

I recently watched a documentary about Tammy Faye Bakker (The Eyes of Tammy Faye). I will admit that I often watch documentaries about religious people because I know they will come across as crazy and that makes me laugh. Or sometimes get scared, like when I watched Jesus Camp.

But. I watched this documentary and was like damn. Tammy Faye was one amazing woman. Rather than being some crazy religious zealot she was, I think, a truly caring person. She worked with AIDS patients back in the 1980's when no one wanted to acknowledge them. In fact, in the documentary, she gives a guy who is dying from AIDS a hug and says everyone should hug someone with AIDS because they don't have many people who will touch them.

She married Jim Bakker, who decided to sleep with someone else, and who then got caught. It was reported in the press that he was embezzling money but that turned out to be a lie in part propagated by Jerry Falwell, one of the most evil fucks on this planet (though Jim did pay off Jessica Hahn to keep her trap shut, not realizing, I guess, that as part of her playmate video she would talk about having sex with him). He stole the empire Jim and Tammy had built (PTL) and then kicked them to the curb, lying the whole time. And, cowardly little asshole that he is, he refused to talk to Tammy Faye for the documentary. He's dead now.

The end of the documentary showed Tammy Faye pitching ideas for shows. She wanted to hang out with disadvantaged youths to see what they were experiencing. Why she was not picked up for a show is a mystery to me. She did her shows for PTL totally unscripted and was always coming up with new ideas for the network.

I was so touched by her, and the documentary, I decided to write her a fan letter. But, unfortunately, she's dead. She died 20 July 2007. She said this in her final interview, the day before she died: "I'd like to say that I genuinely love you, and I genuinely care, and I genuinely want to see you in heaven someday. I want you to find peace. I want you to find joy."

I am going to make a contribution to the american cancer society in her name, and think everyone else should too.

the santosbrazzi killer

Great story...and not just because I'm in Cincinnati...

http://www.harpers.org/archive/2009/01/0082352

a lesbian christmas

I moved to Denver in 2005. I met and hired a great engineer named J.

It turns out J was a lesbian. She and her partner had struggled along with the whole family thing (getting them to accept that she was gay) and the Colorado thing (people aren't as open minded as you might expect given that fact that Boulder exists in this state).

Anyway, having no plans for christmas that year, I got an invite to J's house. She and her partner promised an extravaganza of Italian food the likes of which I would never experience anywhere else. The catch - J's partner, M, had invited her parents to dinner. M's parents were in total denial of the whole lesbian situation. It promised to be a night of arguments and anger.

But, I was hungry. I said yes.

I should mention here that I usually take the last two weeks of the year off and had decided, in my time off, to repaint my house since I wasn't too pleased with the grey colors the previous owner left behind. So I painted and painted, for 10 days straight, 18 hours a day. It was grueling. At 4 oclock in the morning of the day I was due to have dinner at J's I took a 14 foot fall in my stairwell when one of the bricks I was edging on crumbled as I was trying to touch up the ceiling. My bad knee was broadcasting some serious pain.

So I arrived for dinner with a cartoonish limp, my hands curled and shaking from tendonitis due to all that painting. I was probably also high from the paint fumes and had a fair bit of paint in my hair. I showed M and J my bruises from the fall which were pretty impressive. M's parents looked me up and down like "where the fuck did they find this...thing?"

Dinner was served at a rather frosty table. M's parents were astutely in denial, as if Jen and M were room mates or something. The conversation was forced and was mostly about the weather. I was trying to pick up and hold a fork in my hand without making a spectacle of myself, which was hard. I couldn't use my knife at all because my hands were so worked I couldn't keep a grip on anything. J had to cut up my food.

I had been warned beforehand not to bring up the "L" word. But, after an hour of tense conversation, when M's dad asked me, "So, are you dating anyone?" I responded "Are you asking me because you care about my love life, or are you trying to figure out if I'm a lesbian too?" There was dead silence at the table, during which Jen shot me a look that said "I am so going to kick you in the cunt" and then M's parents started laughing. Within minutes lesbian jokes were abounding. It was a nice way to spend the holiday.

And later, M's parents didn't even blink an eye when J kissed me on New Year's, when I met up with them at a party after driving 18 hours from my parents' house. Though the neighbors whose party we were attending were probably like "WTF?"

Later, someone in the neighborhood kicked in the back window of J and M's car and filled the back with broken beer bottles. There were other things done to them that would easily classify as hate crimes. They moved to Washington DC in the hopes of finding a better environment to live in.

This year J decided she was sick of being a lesbian and she is now dating a guy. M is with someone else. And I'll never have such good italian wedding soup again.

do these pants go with this wine?

Tonight I met my dear friend Jeffy out for drinks and dinner at this new wine bar that opened near his house (http://www.indulgewinebar.com/). Jeffy knows more about wine than anyone I've met and also has connections for procuring amazing wines. I sometimes fantasize about running amok in his wine cellar with a glass and bottle opener, and I think he knows this because he showed me pictures of his latest wine acquisitions which he keeps on his iPhone. He likes to torture me. The best bottle of wine I had last year was a gift he handed me while we were sitting in his hotel room at the FJ rally in Ouray. I swear that angels came out of that bottle when it was opened.

Jeffy has the life. He's a high level muck at a company that won't be named, and he's running a major satellite program for them. He hired a kick ass woman engineer (well, goes without saying, we're all kick ass) to do most of his work so he only has to work about 8 hours a week, and he spends the rest of his time biking and skiing. He's going to Ouray to ice climb for new year's (but I'm not jealous - I bet he's bringing wine from his cellar - okay, I'm a little jealous).

He showed up for dinner tonight in a fabulous outfit, including grey cashmere sweater that was probably made by a virgin who was then sacrificed so she would never make the same sweater again. He ordered a great glass of red wine for me and a glass of white for himself (I never order for myself when I'm with him). He said that red wine causes him to wake up every couple of hours while he's sleeping (that could be my problem?) so he's switched to white. Then we had heated hummus with goat cheese and red pepper and talked about Jeffy's book, which is about how he lost 50 pounds in 3 months (he looks fantastic). It's going to be called the lap dance diet. He unfortunately has a ghost writer and didn't ask me to help because he thought I was writing a book already ~:(

And then, the bad thing happened. We ordered flatbread with caramelized onions and figs and the waitress brought it out on this wood tray thing with a handle. The table was on the small size so the handle was hanging over the edge. Seconds later the hostess, a woman in her 50s, walked by our table and somehow caught the handle with her leg, causing the wood tray to slam into Jeffy's wine glass, causing it to shatter and spill wine all over Jeffy because the glass was full.

Jeffy is a big guy. A big, BIG guy. Could be a villain in a James Bond movie. You DO NOT spill wine on Jeffy's clothes.

Pandemonium ensued. There were pieces of the wine glass stem on our flat bread. Jeffy had a lap full of wine and was like "my PANTS!" and I was thinking to myself "your SWEATER!" People ran over. Jeffy has been to this place a lot since it opened (almost all the staff greeted him by name) so the waitresses tried to clean him up the best they could. Jeffy was like "fuck! Fuck! FUCK!" (he was a marine, after all, and speaks the language) and then said to our waitress "That woman is a fucking IDIOT! Look how much ROOM she had to walk by our table! How could she have done that???? She should be FIRED!" at which point our waitress was like "Um, that's my mother."

It really was her mother.

Jeffy and I laughed about that for the next two hours. What are the chances?

The mom then proceeded, an hour later, to dump a glass of wine all over the back and jacket of a girl sitting parallel to us who was at some kind of batchelorette party (bet she wishes she had ordered white instead of red). She was even more fun to watch than Jeffy, who, after everything was cleaned, said "I'm glad I didn't lose my temper." Uh huh.

The best part of the story is that, due to the accident, Jeffy talked the bartender into giving us a cherry liqueur from the bar (they make their own liqueurs). It seriously was like biting into a piece of cherry pie, even though it was a liquid. I can think of very few things that have ever been as wonderful to put in my mouth as that liqueur. It's made locally, with organic cherries, and what ever other shit they put in liqueurs. It's the kind of thing that, after you take a sip of it, you grin like an idiot for at least five minutes and wonder "did that really happen?" Next time we go there we're going to sit at the bar and sample a bunch of the liqueurs. Hopefully nothing will get spilled.

Then I'm going to stumble over to Jeffy's and crash in his wine cellar.

new year's resolution progress

I like to be ahead of schedule so after posting my resolutions I got right to work on them. Here's my progress so far:

• I haven't stolen any straws from Starbucks. Though, I haven't been to Starbucks. But when I fly out on Sunday I'm going to try to not steal any when I walk by Starbucks on my way to the gate.
• I procured DVDs of a course in astronomy taught by a professor at Berkley. The DVDs are hopefully on their way as I write this (www.teach12.com - check it out, the Chaos course is great and I got a copy of that too).
• I have a rough draft of one book proposal and will be working on my other proposal this weekend.
• I'm working on getting my friends to set me up with their single friends. I have one victim lined up for a meeting, though, other than being an ice climber he doesn't meet any of my qualifications. With any luck he will have some good looking friends.
• My dear friend Neil gave me a quick tutorial on painting when I spoke to him on Tuesday night. We are planning a painting weekend where I will go to his house and he will teach me how to paint. I might try to buy some painting stuff tomorrow. I already thought of two things that I want to paint.
• I haven't been untying my shoes, but they are all broken anyway. At some point, maybe next week, I will try to go to a store and buy a new pair of shoes, which I will untie.

Jake - home and healthy for the holidays

So, back in September, I was hit by an uninsured motorist while sitting at a red light. The stupid bitch gave me an insurance card, but it turned out it had been cancelled.

So after numerous wranglings with my insurance company, during which time I was traveling and consulting with a client so things were hard, I eventually found out the bitch who hit me had hired a lawyer and was going to pay for the damages to my car.

I took Jakey in to Body Works, located in Denver, on Monday. They are seriously the best body shop ever. They got my car done early (wasn't supposed to be fixed until Friday), did a great job on the repairs (though I was sad to lose my Mountaineer and Johns Hopkin stickers off the bumper), did the repairs for less than the estimate, and even cleaned my car. They vacuumed him, cleaned his windows, and cleaned off the dashboard and the driver's console. And the guy who fixed my car said if I ever wanted to go on a date with him I should give him a call. Though, the woman at the front desk whispered to me after he left "you might want to wait until he breaks up with his girlfriend".

I am so so so happy to have Jake back and fixed. And keeping my fingers crossed that I get my money back.

tuxedo

I had a very vivid dream about you last night.

In the dream we had just gotten married. It was in the spring. You were wearing a black tuxedo. I think I was wearing a long dress that was pale yellow but I'm not sure. You sent me a picture of yourself in a black tux once though it was more like a passport photo and not like a full length picture.

Then we were walking along this dirt path that was on a cliff overlooking a beach. We were somewhere in Russia although I've never been there. I don't know how I knew that's where we were. Anyway, we were walking along in silence and then you started speaking to me, only you were speaking in German and I couldn't understand what you were saying. I started to worry that I had married someone I couldn't talk to. But then, as we walked along and I was listening to you, I started understanding what you were saying, at first just understanding words and then finally whole sentences, and I was relieved and happy.

Then we came to this lake and at the far end we could see a boat house. You said it would be nice to rent a boat and go out on the lake. So we walked through some woods to get to the boat house and I realized none of the trees had leaves on them. I also looked over at you and saw that you were not wearing your tux anymore and that you instead had on a black wool sweater.

We ran into an old man who was pulling a boat out of the water and I told him we were going to rent a boat to go on the lake. He said "You can't rent a boat anymore. It's fall and the boat house is closed." Then I started to worry because I was only supposed to be gone on our honeymoon for a week and now it was already fall because we had somehow lost track of time and I was sure that I was going to get fired from my job. And then you said "Well, it's too late to go back now, we might as well keep walking." So we turned into the woods and started walking into the sun which was going down because it was late afternoon and I couldn't really see where we were going anymore and then I woke up.