A comedy tonight!

I slept until 3 pm today. That is AMAZING. I don't even know how I did it. I slept longer than Mara.

I'm going to try to make a cake now. This could potentially end in tragedy like last time though it is, of course, extremely unlikely, as I am a habitual liar master of cake baking. The other problem is that even if my cake works, I don't know quite where I'm going to keep it, since I'm pretty sure I can't eat a whole cake in one sitting. I'm not even going to try that option. I guess that's what makes cakebaking an ADVENTURE. What will go into the oven? What will come out afterwards? Where will it go? Brace yourself for wacky hijinks.

Something for everyone

I got to work today, bid in on my register, and immediately had three very difficult persons come through my line, bam bam bam, all with purchases totalling between $110 and $300. HOLY CRAP when your very first customer makes you redo her $300 purchase TWICE because she is insufferably stupid, that does not bode well for the rest of your day.

Not only did she dispute the price of every single item, she started critiquing my bagging technique pretty harshly. This amazes me. Hello woman, I am packing your crap into bags for you after folding it to your rather demanding expectations, and you are going to gripe about this? Would you like to bag it? Because I won't stop you. No? DRINK A GLASS OF SHUT UP THEN PLEASE :)

Apparently she wanted our premium "defy the laws of physics!" bags that allow her to fit twenty pairs of plus size jeans and a half dozen winter coats into one small, easy-to-carry-home-on-the-bus size bag.

People. I dunno, man.

Fortunately, halfway through the day I managed to escape into Halloween, so my mood elevated from "lightly homicidal" to "marginally grumpy" by closing time. Then it was a short bus ride, and then I didn't have to wait for an elevator, and by the time I unlocked the door on the first try I was feeling almost industrious. So I decided to do some laundry and make dinner for myself out of one of the new cookbooks I picked up today.

It's kind of a fancypants book, big and thick with glossy pages and phrases like "wonderfully simple" and "simply delicious" and "simply simple simplicity simply" sprinkled generously throughout the text. The title, however, is "Four Ingredient Cookbook," which made me go "ooh, here's a win!" in my head when I decided to buy it. Four ingredients! Any time I want to make something, I go down the list of ingredients and I'm always missing one stupid thing, and half the time it's cream of ______ soup. It's not that I have a particularly ill-stocked pantry, it's just that any can of anything that sits in there for more than four days turns into a can of spaghettios. Any recipe that calls for cream of chicken soup, for example, should not be attempted unless it can be improved by spaghettios. I could even put the spaghettios in a blender but I don't know if cream of spaghettios would necessarily improve things very much. But only four ingredients? I might stand a chance here.

I was mostly mistaken on the "standing a chance" bit, which was not unexpected. I am not, for example, prepared to even begin dealing with "Pheasant cooked in port with mushrooms" or "Roast cod wrapped in prosciutto with vine tomatoes." Sea Bass in a Salt Crust? Mussel Risotto? I am going to eat spaghettios forever, aren't I?

I tried to take refuge in the pasta and rice section, the logic being that I knew I'd have at least 25% of the ingredients. This of course got a little stumped in the face of things like "Rosemary risotto with borlotti beans" but I did manage to make the spaghetti with lemon. That was such a relief. I need a whole book of spaghettis with lemons. I have spaghetti, I have lemons, I have olive oil, I have garlic. I can DO this thing.

I'm pretty terrified of that Japanese cookbook I bought, though. I haven't even opened it yet. If this four ingredient business wound up being so snooty, what in God's name am I going to find in there?

Something peculiar

I've been mulling it over in my head for days now, and I still can't sort it out. Some things just don't have easy answers, and this is no exception. Some things, in fact, have no answers at all, and all you can really do is sigh and let it go. I realize this, and yet I feel almost driven to find the right solution to this puzzle. I can't just let it go. I guess I have a brain like a terrier, always sinking its teeth into things bigger than itself and yipping and growling and holding on like the devil and refusing to let go for anything. I can't really rest easy until I have this resolved.

So here's the twofold deal: it's very obvious that Rose is a Hufflepuff and I think Dorothy would make a pretty reasonable Ravenclaw. But what of Blanche and Sophia? Neither one really screams Gryffindor or Slytherin. I mean, I guess I'm leaning towards putting Sophia in Slytherin, but that leaves Blanche for Gryffindor and I'm just not sure that's quite right. Really, Blanche is the problem here. I think Sophia could be worked around to fit into either house well enough, but Blanche just doesn't seem to work for any of the four.

Also I don't understand why I find it necessary to mix the Golden Girls with Harry Potter. It's times like these I wish my brain had an off switch. It's one thing to lose sleep because you've got a lot of things on your mind, but when those things are cream of toddler and putting the golden girls through wizarding school, I start to raise objections.

Something familiar

Yesterday I bought tickets to see these guys at First Avenue in November. They were eleven dollars. I am way pumped. If that video wasn't enough to make you pumped, this was their first video. Wikipedia tells me it was filmed on a borrowed camera in the backyard in one shot for less than $10, and was choreographed by the lead singer's sister. I support this sort of behavior. And I need three friends to learn the dance with me. So, first things first, I guess I need three friends.

For some reason every concert I've gotten tickets for happens to be in November. So far it's Ok Go on the 8th, the Decemberists on the 12th, and Blind Guardian (!!!) on the 22nd. I'm eyeing the Dresden Dolls, too, but I might not go for that one since it's in October, when I technically can't take time off, and I don't know the band all that well. Which is the same reason I decided not to see Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. Though, to be fair, one of the main reasons I even considered going to see them was because I think their name is ticklishly fun. But I'm pretty sure I can do that for free, just sitting at my computer. I don't need to spend money on it.

Then do something dumb before you die.

How do weekends move so fast? One minute you're waking up on a Saturday, the next it's all ZING oh look it's time to wake up for work on Monday. It's uncanny, is what it is. I think if we could somehow harness the raw speed of weekends and figure out how to convert that into useable energy, holy crap, we'd really be flying along. We would have our Jetson cars by now.

It's nice to have weekends off, though. It seems management has taken a shine to me for some reason, because I've gotten the princess schedules lately. I don't object to this in the slightest. Management is welcome to like me all it wants, so long as there is no obligation on my part to like it back. They keep giving me projects, too, which haven't been bad yet. They hired a girl specifically for Halloween, but she only works Thursday through Sunday, so they've got me doing her other three days. This means I have to wear the fruity little "Official Costumeologist" jacket and am mostly confined to the Halloween section helping confused people sort through the used area to decide what they want for a costume and then watching them just buy the cheesy new packaged costumes anyway. I've managed to spend the last few days hiding out in the production room pricing hats, though, so it's not so bad.

Running the silent auction has been easy street so far, too. The whole thing was in shambles since the last person to run it got fired (GOSSIP TIME!: how dumb do you have to be to steal a $100 out of your own drawer? I mean honestly people, as the Loss Prevention guy put it, if you're going to get caught stealing, give it some class) so I had to spend almost a whole day cleaning out the case and calling the bidding winners. Oh, darn, a whole day spent on a chair by myself in the office. And any time I had to leave the office, I left with the silent auction binder in one arm, which, when coupled with a purposeful stride, is very nearly as good as a clipboard for indicating to people that you are, in fact, very important and busy at this moment. Actually I've managed to do pretty well with the auction business; within a day or two of taking over, I've gotten people to come in and buy around $500 worth of stuff that had just been sitting in the display case collecting dust since August. Management has been duly impressed.

The only catch to management liking me is that they might like me too much. Just the other day Mary walked into the office, sat down across from me, and asked me point-blank if I had a car. Huh. Err, no. Could I drive. Uhh, afraid not, no. Well, did I have a permit. Nnnnnooooo. Then she gave this exasperated sigh and said, "Well...shame on you! I've been looking for a new supervisor."

Now, you might at this time be thinking, perhaps sensibly, that is this a great disappointment to me. But if you are thinking this, you are mistaken. Becoming a supervisor in that place is like being crowned queen of Craptown. Congratulations, you are the queen! OF CRAPTOWN. Here is your CRAPCROWN. Wear it with pride.

No thank you, I am currently only 20 years old and I'd like to enjoy my relative lack of responsibility while I still can. I thoroughly intend to one day find a better job than Craptown, and on that day I will merrily tapdance out the front door with nary a look back in case doing so turns me into a pillar of salt. Well, ok, two weeks after that day, I'm not the quit-without-notice sort. But I'm pretty sure this might be the only time in my life where failing to get a license will prove beneficial. I feel like a guy who got out of being drafted for 'Nam on a medical technicality, except instead of flat feet I had cold feet (y'know, for driving). Whew.

On a completely unrelated note, I made my first tater tot hotdish the other day. I think this qualifies me for full-fledged Minnesotan adulthood now. And just in case it wasn't official enough, I used my Uffda pot holder to pull it out of the oven. You know. To really seal the deal. I have now graduated from the School of Minnesota with a BS in Nice, baptized in cream of mushroom soup and a tater tot diploma in my hand.

I'm not going to lie to you, that last sentence was all about me wanting to say I had been baptized in cream of mushroom soup, because I think that would be so funny. And having a BS in Nice. Ha ha ha.

I have to be awake in five hours. I predict I will want to die. Why am I still up.

If you want a place in the history books

So the default channel in the break room really likes to play weight loss commercials over and over again. After watching one commercial, a rapid montage of ecstatic people declaring the insane amounts of weight they had lost, about five or six times, I started thinking. You lose, say, 35 pounds on such-and-such diet, that's like losing a fat toddler. I decided then that if I ever lost an insane amount of weight I would measure it in terms of toddlers. But then it occurred to me that this isn't quite accurate, since you are losing the weight of a toddler but not the shape, you know? I mean, it's not like you had a toddler firmly grappling your midsection and you slapped its hands until it fell off, you know? That toddler was pretty evenly distributed. And the only way I can think of to evenly distribute a toddler is to puree it first. So it would be more realistic to say you lost 35 pounds of Cream of Toddler, not merely a toddler.

"I lost the equivilent of 3.5 pureed toddlers on the Kickinrad Diet!"

Aren't you glad we've taken this little stroll through my head.

Clever people wouldn't even try

"Can I use your bathroom?"

"I'm sorry, ma'am, our restrooms aren't public."

"I HAVE EXPLOSIVE DIARRHEA!!"

"Oh."

Heck yes, lady, I am WAY excited to let you use our bathrooms now!

I let her use them anyway. I figure, if it comes down to explosions in the bathroom vs explosions in aisle seven, at least the bathroom is contained.

History is made by stupid people

I just made a huge pot of goulash and a huge bowl of vegetable salad stuff.

Guess what I'm eating for the rest of forever?

It's so lonely 'round the fields of Athenry

Today Lizard and Mara and I piled into Betty the Car and drove to Jayme's apartment.

That sentence contained a surplus of proper nouns.

Anyway, we had tacos and played games at Jayme's and it was a good time. I am jealous of Jayme's hardwood flooring. Mara doesn't really share this jealousy, since according to her hardwood floors just mean you have to buy rugs. I think she is mistaken, but I guess the point is ultimately moot since we live in a strictly carpet-and-linoleum apartment and that's not going to change any time soon. So I'll just be quietly jealous.

On the way home from Jayme's, though, we looked at Betty's dash, and lo! beheld that she was about ten miles from rolling into the 80,000 mile mark. So we did the logical thing, which was to whoop and holler and hum snatches of Europe's "The Final Countdown" as we drove in circles around the Quarry parking lot until it was exactly 80,000.0 miles. Happy new year! We took pictures and bought some meat from Rainbow and went home feeling very smug. The funny thing is, though, Betty is a '92. It took that car 14 years to reach 80k. I think that puts Betty in the special ed program for cars. I mean, it's not like we didn't know she was a bit of a thickie, but that's just kind of amazing.

So she'll live and hope and pray for her love in Botony Bay

Today an elderly white man informed us that he was Jackie Chan, and you know what that means? Do you know what that means? No. What does that mean. It means tiger punches at people's heads! Sir, the store is closed. Please leave. Tiger punches! Go now.

Also Kerri told me today that starting next week I'm going to be in charge of the silent auction stuff. Pretty much that means I'll be arranging the display case, numbering everything, setting up the book, and then calling the winners at the end of the auction. I can't say as I'm really looking forward to calling people, but hey, it means I'm not on a register while I'm doing it, so I think I can adjust. The last silent auction went insanely well--a guitar went for $150, a big matted picture for $220, an old print of the Last Supper for $180--so the future looks bright for this one, too. Of course, that means making more phone calls. But I dunno, maybe they'll let me eat my lunch in the office or something. That's luxury, that is.

As the prison ship sailed out against the sky

I woke up around 9 this morning feeling industrious, so I made banana nut bread. But apparently banana bread wasn't enough for me, so I also experimented with lemon bars. Then I had some of the lemon goo left over, so for some reason I decided to soak it up with pieces of bread and throw those in the oven, too. I think that decision was influenced mostly by the fact that Mara wasn't home yet. If nobody else knows I've made something weird, I can just throw it away and it's like nothing ever happened. This doesn't work so well when there are witnesses, though (or if it's the middle of winter and your family will be home in five minutes and what was supposed to be rice krispies is instead a thick black glue quickly solidifying in the pot and it won't come out without a chisel and the ground's too frozen for you to run outside and bury it which for some reason was your first impulse and you're never going to live this one down oh god oh god). I guess that makes me feel kind of like a hitman for food.

"What happened to that cake?"

"What cake?"

"That one you were making?"

"I DON'T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT ANY CAKE"

"I'm pretty sure I--"

"I DON'T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT ANY CAKE IN THE GARBAGE"

"Oh, I see."

In any event, the creation cooperated so I didn't need to call in a hit on it. I think it would've worked out just a bit better, though, if I'd had any bread available to me but potato. Something about toasted lemon potato bread, I just don't even know.

By a lonely harbour wall, she watched the last star falling,

So, uh, anybody here know anything about watch repair?

I bought this watch from work, see, and it's amazing. I totally have a crush on this watch. It doesn't look to be old or anything, but it's got Mandarin around a big star on the back, a little red star on the tip of the second hand, and a picture of Mao Tse-Tung against a red backdrop on the face. Not just any Mao, though. Just any Mao wouldn't be all that interesting. This Mao waves. He's got a little hinged arm that jigs back and forth merrily all the livelong day. Or at least it would if the darn watch worked like it should. When it comes right down to the "from each according to his ability" bit, Mao apparently doesn't care to put much into the system, because every few minutes he stops waving, and if Mao isn't waving, time isn't passing. Not for that watch, at least. I guess for that watch the only real time is right Mao. Ha ha ha.

Granted I think spending a week with your head stuck in the windmill at a mini golf course is preferable to being a communist, but there's just something so earnest about this watch that I can't help but love it. However, poking around on the internet gave me the spirit-dampening impression that there is no way I can afford to pay anybody to fix it for me. I think I'm going to have to put it on my Someday list, right up there with getting my sofa reupholstered. Maybe I'll get both done at the same time. Ring ring, yes hello I was wondering if your company reupholsters old sofas? Yes? Excellent! Do you also repair watches? You don't? Goodbye.

Having a wonderful time!

Strange things are afoot at Lake Street Savers. Yesterday was the guy with all his ties, and today I found three shirts in three different rooms at different times of the day...all with one or more sleeves cut off.

WHAT IS UP WITH THAT.

Living in the sunlight, loving in the moonlight,

A guy bought $102.40 worth of ties today. Ties are .99 each.

That, my friends, is an amazing amount of ties.

Now personally, if I was that guy, I'd be a little self conscious about coming across as the Imelda Marcos of ties, you know? I mean, I'd be half hoping the cashier would say something like, "Oh wow, what are your plans for these ties?" so I could chuckle and say "Oh, I'm going to use them for _____," _____ being anything that sounds reasonably sane. Not to mention that after your cashier has counted out a hundred stupid ties maybe she's earned an answer or two, you know? I mean, maybe I'm crazy, but that's just how I roll. Not this guy, though.

"Wow, this is a lot of ties! What're you going to do with them all?"

"...(shrug)..."

Did you just shrug at me? I am up to my elbows in your cartload of ties, this sort of thing demands explanation. You are so not getting off this easily, buddy.

"No really, are you going to wear them or wallpaper your house or something?"

"I...transmit them to people."

You transmit ties to people?

"Oh. So, uh, like, you sell on eBay?"

I mean seriously, transmit? That doesn't even make sense. Unless you bounce these ties off of satellites and radio towers, I am not impressed by your word selection. <--(these are things I think about I guess)

"...Not eBay. Other...venues."

And that was the end of it. This man transmits ties to people via eBay-alternative venues. That's all I was going to get out of him.

What.

So I'm a little befuddled about why he was being so evasive about these ties. I mean, he wasn't buying a hundred ties, a leather mask, and a riding crop. He wasn't buying a hundred ties, a book entitled "How to kill people with ties" and a pair of pantyhose. He just bought a hundred ties. That is very vague.

I sort of felt like I was listening to somebody talk on the phone about buying, I dunno, buttons or something, but in really careful, hushed tones. "Yeah, man, I got the *buttons* catalogue today. Looks pretty good. I haven't *ordered* any *buttons* in a while, know what I'm saying? Listen, I got some *pals* coming over tonight to *watch the game*, you'd like 'em, they're pretty *reliable*, anyway I'm thinking we'd be interested in, say, a hundred *buttons*? Excellent, excellent, let me know when they're ready for *pickup*." I mean eventually you catch on that they're not REALLY talking about buttons, you know? This was like that. But. He wasn't kidding. He really did order a hundred buttons. Or, as the case may be, ties.

Which leaves me at sort of a loss. What could he possibly be doing with these ties that would cause him to be so downright dodgy about it? Is there some kind of underground, black market application for neckties that I've never heard of? I mean, come on, what is he doing, using them to run drugs?

That was my favorite possibility I came up with, I think. Mule ties.

And then there was the lady with two pinkies. I mean, it was really only one finger, but it ended in kind of a Y shape at the first joint, each with a perfectly manicured nail on the end. Do you know how hard it is not to stare? It is very hard. I think I succeeded, but just barely.

My favorite of the day was still tie-transmittor man. Whatever all the mystery was about, it still makes me think of some kind of black market for neckties, and that just make me laugh. Transmit. Sheesh.

I feel happy and fine, ha HA!

Oh lordy today was a miserable day to be at the ren fest. I mean, granted I got in for free thanks to my contacts on the inside (well, ok, Mary's fiance Alex works in the Bad Manor kitchens, he got us free tickets. But "contacts on the inside" just sounds infinitely cooler, so that's what you're gonna get from me) but, wow. I had no idea, for example, that we were going to be there from 9 to 6:30. And while I knew it was going to be a bit cool, I was grievously unaware of just how cool, and that cool would bring along its good friends drizzle, rain, and wind.

To summarize: After a day spent around sodden people and sullen ren fest employees, I arrived home a frozen, disheveled, filthy mess with about three pounds of mud and wood chips in the cuffs of my pants. I'm going to have to throw my shoes in the washing machine and hope for the best, I think.

I did, however, learn some terrifically awful insults from Vilification Tennis which you will NEVER hear from me because I like being alive, thank you very much. I watched me some caber and sheaf tossing, which taught me the valuable historical lesson that when enough men hole up on the highlands, they will come up with some incredibly stupid games. And I learned a lot about glass blowing. Why glass blowing? Well, for one thing I've always thought it was kind of cool, and also, did you know those furnaces they use have temperatures which hover between 1500 and 2000 degrees? And while they're designed to leak as little excess heat as possible, when your core temperature is reaching your shoe size you'll take just about anything you can get.

Things that bother you never bother me

I justed made banana muffins while watching First Blood. The muffins are delicious. So is First Blood.

Someday my incongruities will smite me.

I know what you'd pay to see

Today I was waiting at the light rail station for, you know, the light rail, because I can't wait for it anywhere else and there's really nothing else to wait for at a light rail station unless you've got some kind of poorly planned shady business going down, because honestly why would you use something like the light rail for that? Anyway, I was casually leaning my bottom against a big warm metal pipe in the hope that it would dry out the damp spot in my pants from when I sat on the wet bench to wait for the bus, which I had done before the bus took me here to wait for the light rail, and I was hoping that it would sort of dry it out a little somehow. It all worked in my head. And as I'm waiting there, two transportation cops came cruising along on their segways. Except they weren't really cruising, they were going pretty slow. I guess they had the segway speed dial set to mosey. And they had their fancy dark little transportation cop uniforms on, and helmets with the black visors over their eyes, and were all up on their segways and everything and one of them said hello to me as he passed.

I am proud to say that despite the desperate urge to do so, I didn't respond with a cheerful "mornin' Robocop!" I just said good morning and that's probably why I am alive today to tell you about it.

Segways are like the unicycles of the moped world. Would you feel confident knowing your law enforcement officers were rolling along on mopeds? No? Why are these guys riding less than half of a moped? This is one of those cases where less really is more, so long as you accept that the "more" in question is "more dorkiness."

In case you are nodding coolly like you totally know what I'm talking about but you don't, really, but you're too cool to say it, this is what I'm talking about. But you already knew that, of course, you hipster. I won't tell.

Now, unicycles. That's a whole different ball game. I am of the opinion that a squad of cops on unicycles would be awesome. Just picture it. If you can picture that in your head and not let out a Keanu Reeves "whoa" at the thought, then you are either a very strong willed person or you aren't picturing it hard enough.

Whoa.

I might just have the thing

Dinner with the Sculati chapter of the family tonight. A+++ would eat with again. The food beat the pants off of pretty much everything I'd been eating over here, and Americo was even nice enough to hit me in the face with a lego (well, if I had known that the lego was actually a rocket, I would definitely have thought twice about leaning over to him at the exact moment of launch initiation, so it's really my fault. You gotta be careful around rockets) and pull out one of my earrings. Then Lucia stepped in a tomato, and Aunt Bay gave me a cute little mexican tablecloth and some cute little psychadelic looking napkins which are all in a cute little bag which I'm sure is very cute looking there on the table in the kitchen where I forgot it. Oops. Cute little next time.

Sale day tomorrow at work. If you never hear from me again, I likely will have spontaneously combusted, which is convenient for sweeping up my ashes and spreading them ANYWHERE BUT SAVERS. That's all I ask, don't leave a trace of my immortal remains in that place. I will know and I will be very cross.

Well I know just what you need

"Why did you just write on that $20 bill?"

"This is a counterfeit detection marker. I have to mark all bills $20 and over."

"Oh, really? What does it do if it's counterfeit?"

"It explodes!"

"...it...does it really explode?"

"No. The mark turns black."

"Oh."

Frustrated Incorporated

Today Mara was zipping along in rush hour traffic on her way to the U when Betty, being something of an asinine car, decided it would be awfully fun to flip her lid, so to speak. By which I mean the hood popped up and slammed against the windshield. I was not there at the time but I hear there was, in fact, quite a lot of panicky screaming coming from the driver's seat. She had to merge through heavy traffic using her side mirrors and try to get the now badly dented hood to latch while parked along the shoulder. Reports indicate that panicky screaming turned into frustrated cursing at this point. Plus all this happened just 150 feet before the entrance of a tunnel, which would have been a disaster. UNNECESSARILY EXCITING. Then after nine hours of "welcome to the mortuary science program, we're so very excited" orientation she goes to her work only to find that they closed at 4 pm today. Permanently. They did not see fit to warn any of their employees in advance about this wee little minor detail, though, so it came as a bit of a shock.

I mean, we always knew that her Quiznos was Satan's septic tank in fast food form, but you'd think they would maybe find it prudent to mention something about it to the people who, I dunno, like to not be homeless.

I, for one, had a runny nose today. That's about all I can say for my part.

But it was very runny. Frankly, I disapprove.