happy old year!

As we race into the next decade* I thought I'd give you a going away present.

A few, actually, because I'm so generous.

1. Oh Fernando, Why Are You So Eloquent?

The other day my dear officemate declared that he was listening to "poopular music," which gave us a good chuckle. And then, yesterday, when I was wearing the new fleece I got for Christmas (sort of), he told me that my fleece was very "action." "It looks like you're going to do things," he said, as I put it on.

2. That's Very Surprising!

Have you ever eaten a lot of beets? I bought and roasted a bunch of them last week, and they were delicious. However, there's a shocking side effect: purple poo.

3. I Heart My Mother

Among the many ridiculous things we all said over the Christmas holiday, here are my favorites from my mom:

me (over the phone): What are you doing?

Mom: Sitting around in our Santa hats, eating candy canes, waiting for you to come home.

Mom: (in a game, trying to come up with a verb) To be-is-am-are-were-run-fuck!

My Aunt: (describing an imaginary friend from childhood) Yahudie [pronounced "yay-who-dee"] lived in the refrigerator and turned the light on and off.

Mom: (very matter of factly) No, no, no. That's not right. Yahudie lived under the sidewalk.

(duh, everyone knows that.)

3. Oh-S0-Irritating!

You know what drives me crazy? Asterisks on product labels that lead nowhere. My mom had some disinfecting wipes, and they made a claim that it killed 98% of bacteria, which was followed by an asterisk, which I assumed meant that statistic would be explained or expanded on.

But no! They either forgot to add the information -- information someone thought at some point was important enough to highlight with an asterisk! -- or they never thought anyone would catch it.

But I did. (Call me Asterisk Watch Dog if you want to.)

4. A Lesson For Everyone

Not you, of course. You're perfect. But everyone else should look here.

* I hate it when people say this. (See? I follow up with my asterisks!)

cookie party, 2009

How does a tradition start? By doing the same thing year after year, I guess, or at least doing it enough times that people start to say, "oh yeah, doesn't Kate throw a cookie party every year?"

So, since there was a party in 2006 (which I totally forgot about until I was writing this piece!), one in 2007, and one in 2008, I guess that by doing it in 2009, I'm actually on the path to a real-live tradition!

This year's cookie party was once again fabulous, with frosting flying every which way, and sprinkles (like pine needles or beach sand) ending up in the strangest places.

The attendees this year were both new and old. Andrea and Lisa (with the boys) repeated from years past, and Patricia and Ellyn joined up anew. (Keri and Avery didn't make it that day, but were with us in spirit.)

The improvements I made over previous years -- more actual food! more presents for the children! -- were tremendous. This year I served rosemary butternut squash lasagna, garlic mint potatoes, bean soup, sugared cranberries, and apple almond quinoa. The number of debilitating sugar headaches dropped dramatically!

The OCD factor was back, as Andrea had missed last year's party, and this year, her meticulous decorating skills inspired Ellyn and Patricia to reach new heights, in an effort to reach the winners' circle. Max -- who is now six and a half -- was also driven to "make a contender." So driven, in fact, that he created about sixty five thousand contenders (not realizing, of course, that he had his own category -- the Under Seven Cookies).

The boys, in fact, had some creative decorating techniques. Max's plan of attack was to wad a glob of frosting into the middle of the cookie (for best dispersal later) and then to dump a handful of sprinkles into the palm of his hand. With a somewhat slow rotation of his wrist, 70% of the sprinkles landed on the table or floor, 5% hit the dry part of the cookie and about 25% reached the glob of frosting. So, of course, to meet with satisfactory sprinkling results, the process had to be repeated four times for each cookie.

Having just swept and mopped my floor (and knowing full well I'd have to do it again after the party), Lisa and I made valiant attempts to curb this decorating method. To no avail, of course, because a child under 7 + sugar + lots more sugar + anyone saying "no" = Disaster, Pure and Simple.

Charlie, on the other hand, had a strangely more self-contained approach to frosting. Which is to say, he frosted himself. He got some on a cookie (probably by accident) and the rest of it on his pants, hair, shirt, brother, seat... He reached for sprinkles once, but that idea was quickly squashed by the entire apartment. And he seemed fairly pleased with the prospect of merely frosting himself. (And, the rim of a volcano, as you'll see below.)

But enough talk, already, Kate! Let's see the winners!

In the Under Seven Category, Max was the all around winner!

The best traditional cookies:
Clockwise from top: "Jew" cookie by Lisa, "Glove" by Ellyn, OCD Tree by Patricia, OCD Bear by Andrea, and Self-Strangulating Snowman by Yours Truly.
In the Best Non-Traditional Category:

Clockwise from top left: Awkward Teenage Bear (complete with acne and the ugly outfit his mother made him wear) by Andrea, Creepy French Manicure Hand by Kate, The Shitting Dove of Peace by Ellyn (note the poop in the crack of the cookie), Festive Lederhosen Guy with Big Package by Patricia, and Almond Coat Bear by Ellyn.
And everybody's favorite category... The Ugliest!!

Clockwise from top left: Cracky Bear by Lisa, Flickery-Vagina-y Lightbulb by Kate, Amoeba by Patricia, Plaguey Pig by Ellyn, Clean-the-Table CandyCane by Kate, and Max's contribution to the Ugly field, which really isn't all that ugly, actually...

I feel eternally grateful to these women for making my life, my home, and my kitchen all the friendlier and warmer. It is starting to feel like without the party, it might not be Christmas.

now that I'm older and wiser, my posts will be, too!

Yeah, that's a lie. I have absolutely no plans to up the quality of what you find here, even though I'm now 33.

Do I feel bad about that? Yeah, kind of. To use a phrase Fernando employs when he does something really stupid and feels awful about, "I'm sorrytarded."

So here are a few of my observations since we last saw each other.

1. I saw a fabulous dance piece recently, called Nut/Cracked. Unfortunately, it's closing today (I knew I should have posted sooner!) but it's a more modern version of the Nutcracker. I'm not a big modern dance fan, but this piece was terrific! My favorite moment was a solo where this woman walks on stage, unrolls a sheet of bubble wrap about three feet wide by five feet long and then spends the next six minutes NOT stepping on it. Flailing herself over it, wiggling around it, I'm-not-touching-you-I'm-not-touching-you it, until finally, she can't stand it any longer and then just flings her body, full force, smack into the middle of the sheet with the most gratifying POPPOPPOPPOPPOPPOPPOP of all time! Like a pig in shit or a kid in frosting, there is no way around the fact that this was orgasmic.

In truth, it made me want to go home and get some bubble wrap.

2. At work the other day, a woman stopped by my office.

"I have a problem I need you to look at in my email," she said.

"Ok, what is it?"

"It's Sarah."

"Who's Sarah?"

"I think you should come and see."

So I got up, walked over to her desk and looked at her inbox. She was drowning in emails from Sarah. All 87 of them had the same subject: "Sarah has added you on FuckBook!"

"Who is this Sarah?" asked my co-worker, "And what, exactly, does she think I'm going to do on FuckBook?"

The best part of all this? Not my co-worker hounding Fernando with stories of FuckBook for twenty minutes in a row (although that was really funny). No, it was having to forward the message to the head of IT, asking for help to block the emails from Sarah from FuckBook.

Wheee! Legitimate use of the word Fuck at work!

3. I would like to take a moment to thank all the cute guys of the world who actually look good in tight pants for wearing them. And, while I'm at it, to send a reminder to the not-so-cute guys in the world, who don't look good in tight pants, to go out and invest in some lovely khakis. You know, the ones with AMPLE room in the seats...

a cure for holiday loneliness

The holidays can be tough -- causing some people to feel despondent, bummed out, and just plain lonely. If you fall into that last category, perhaps you should spend more time with quality people online.

Visit your pals at Hot Chicks with Douchebags. There, you can mix and mingle with fine examples of humanity (and the nasty-assed guys they allow themselves to photographed with).

Like your friend, Cheeto-Man and his girlfriend:

If they don't lift your spirits, how about a visit with People of Public Transit?

The "Pole Polisher" should cheer you up a bit:

No? You're still feeling lonesome? Head over to your local Walmart and visit with the People of Walmart...

And yeah, you're welcome. Go ahead and happily hide under the bed for the rest of the season. We'll come and get you in the middle of January.

on singleness and chocolate

A vegan chocolate cake recipe that is surprisingly good:

1 1/2 cups of flour

3/4 cups of sugar

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon of baking soda

3 Tablespoons of cocoa

1 teaspoon vanilla

1/3 cup vegetable oil

1 Tablespoon vinegar

1 cup water

Mix them all together and bake at 350 for 30 minutes.

(I bring this up because the odds are good that you have all these ingredients at home, sitting there waiting for you. And you don't need any of the fancy ones, like butter, eggs, milk, pudding, etc. I'm just saying that, in a pinch, this satisfies one's need for chocolate.)

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I would like men to come with manuals. (Ha! MAN-uals!) They think we're confusing, but if we're confusing, it's only because they're bewildering.

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Names I never want to scream in passion in the heat of the moment:

Harold

Howard

Norman

Walter

Horace

Herman

Mohammed

Luigi

Jesus

Big Papa

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One problem with being single and living alone is that if you buy a bag of chocolate chips, accidentally open them, and then proceed to eat the entire bag, you have no one else to blame but yourself. Nobody came along and ate "just a handful." Sure, you may have dropped one or two, but not three hundred calories' worth.

Nope, you (and you alone) ate that whole bag. (It's amazing, though, how they can cram such a small bag full of 1400 chips -- knowing that each one only has one calorie...)

less content, more fluff!

I was on a date a while ago and the guy I was with said something deep and profound and prefaced it by saying something like "Well, you know what de Tocqueville says... [insert deep and profound thing here.]"

I looked at him, smiled nerdishly and said, "You've been waiting all day to quote de Tocqueville, haven't you?"

He looked at me, smiled nerdishly and said, "I paraphrased him, I didn't quote him."

Touche, date, touche.

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Overheard at work recently:

"Don't let the door hit you where the good lord split you."

"Nut up or shut up"

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The heat came on in my apartment recently. For a whole day, my home smelled like hot dust.

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So there's a great DIY arts and crafts organization called Etsy. (I think it's short for something, but I don't know what.) They have a whole website where you can buy and sell homemade stuff. And this, of course, has spawned another fabulous website... have you seen regretsy?

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Fernando got two enormous boxes of something delivered to the office recently. So of course, I had to climb into one of them and pop out and shout "SURPRISE!" when he came back into the office. Yes, he knew I was in there. Yes, he laughed anyway. (I love this guy.)

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"I will continue to microwave halibut in the company lunch room every single day until such time as you sign all of my expense reports." (Awesomeness.)

on chickens and eggs (but mostly eggs)

I've been a vegetarian for over a year now, so if there's one thing I know how eat, it's eggs. A major source of protein in my diet, these small ovules are delicious, nutritious, and constantly available in refrigerators near you. (And, of course, when I say "you," I mean "me.")

So when a suitor sent me a link on how to cook the perfect boiled egg (telling me, strangely, that the article made him think of me), I figured it had to be funny or particularly well written (since the topic was less than scintillating). Because it's really not hard to boil eggs. To quote a GEENYUS, "it's not rocket surgery."

Sadly, the article did not rock my world. (No offense J. Kenji Lopez-Alt.) I thought it would suggest hard boiling eggs with rocket fuel or in the microwave or something new-fangled and exciting. Instead, it merely proposed not bringing the water to a boil when hard boiling eggs, providing lots of attractive scientific method to prove the goodness of this idea. So, even though it seemed painfully counter intuitive, I was willing to try J. Kenji Lopez-Alt's method. (Because, realistically, I liked the suitor and thought it would give us something to talk about.)

I have had the worst week of hard boiled eggs in my life.

The method of hard boiling the eggs proposed by J. Kenji Lopez-Alt did not get my eggs cooked all the way through. So while the yolk is less dry and more appealing, THE WHITES ARE GOOPY.

Nobody likes goopy whites. Nobody. Homeless people scoff at goopy whites, and even Sally Struthers' starving children are skeptical. Chickens will drown themselves in a rainstorm before claiming to have produced a goopy-whited egg. So needless to say, I've been miserable.

The other problem is that the shells stick to the whites. And to a hungry girl in the middle of the afternoon, there is little more frustrating than taking an item of food that is a mere two cubic inches and trying to peel away a fraction of a millimeter of that food, only to have about a cubic inch of food stuck to the peelings.

I am not pleased, J. Kenji Lopez-Alt. Not pleased at all.

(And things didn't work out with the suitor, either.)

collected thoughts on jury duty

I served my time today. I showed up for jury duty.

Here are some observations:

8:30-11:00 The Jury Room

Remember the teacher's voice in Charlie Brown? Imagine hearing that give you step by step directions on how to fill in the equivalent of a credit card application.

Also, there was a fabulous movie on the history of jury trials. All I could think about was how psyched the actors were who landed those roles. "Dude! I'm going to be in a jury duty film that they'll show in Brooklyn court rooms for decades! Sweet!"

11:00-1:00 The Empaneling Room

The empaneling room was all of 10'x20' and there were 23 of us in there. It was painted in an exciting shade of Doldrums Gray and the temperature in there was a brisk 98.6 degrees. Perfect attention paying weather!

Three different attorneys explained judicial procedures to us. I fought to stay awake.

"Ms. Neal, do you think you could be impartial in this case? Give both sides a fair shake? Let the chips fall where they will? The case is a blank blackboard and we'll fill it up with evidence. Do you think you could make a decision based on that evidence, and not on anything else? Are you a fair person?"

"Yes."

"Great! Mr. MacDuffy, do you think you could be impartial in this case? Give both sides a fair shake? Let the chips fall where they will? The case is a blank blackboard and we'll fill it up with evidence. Do you think you could make a decision based on that evidence, and not on anything else? Are you a fair person?"

"Yes."

"Great! Ms. Surgeon, do you think you could be impartial in this case? Give both sides a fair shake? Let the chips fall where they will? The case is a blank blackboard and we'll fill it up with evidence. Do you think you could make a decision based on that evidence, and not on anything else? Are you a fair person?"

"I'm sorry, what? I didn't hear you the first seventeen times you said that."

Actually, there was one woman who, when asked if she could serve fairly on the jury, said, "I could, but I don't want to." And then I overheard her muttering something about having to answer to Jesus and what if she didn't agree with the laws?

1:00-2:00 Lunch

I was the obnoxious white vegetarian at Subway over lunch. I ordered a veggie patty sandwich and they were much faster than I thought they'd be, so the patty was in the microwave before I saw them do it. So they kept fixing the sandwich without the patty. And I kept reminding them that this was a veggie patty sandwich, not just a veggie sandwich. I must have said "veggie patty" fourteen times. (And it's not a pretty thing to say.) In hindsight, I was kind of a bitch. I didn't mean to be, but I was.

(I'm sorry, Subway!)

2:00-4:30 Jury Room

They didn't like me enough to empanel me on that personal injury case -- even though the law firm I work with doesn't do personal injury work. (I thought about telling them that the defendants' attorney looked like an exboyfriend of mine, but he wasn't cute enough to sway my feelings one way or the other, so I let it slide). Maybe it was because I explained to them what a technical trainer does -- "I teach lawyers how to use their computers."

So I wasn't unhappy being sent back to the jury room. I checked my email, read my book, and actually watched a movie (since I brought my computer with me).

It was, however, kind of cool at the end of the day, when they read the names of jurors who were being dismissed. It's a long list before you get to "Surgeon," so I got to hear the melting pot of names called, one after another. Caitlin MacBride was right next to Jeanine Moskovitz, who were just behind a series of different Lees and Lis.

Would I do it again? Not for eight years. Was I happy to do it? You bet. I'm so civic it hurts.

I have a new chiropractor...

I'm in love.

Again.

With a back-crackin' fool.

(Will I never learn?)

I'd been seeing my regular chiropractor for quite some time, and the pain in my shoulder subsided enough to be bearable, but the pain in my lower back was increasing to Grandma-ish levels, so I went to the health fair.

And there he was. Right next to the skeleton.

Our eyes locked, and it was as if the sky opened up and angels started singing.

"Would you like to make an appointment?" he whispered into my half-opened mouth.

"Yes, YES, YES!!" I screamed with ecstasy, tossing my hair from side to side, and ripping my blouse from my shoulders.

His assistant (who is way prettier on a regular day than I was at prom -- and younger, too) handed me a card and a smile and sent me on my way.

All I had to do now was wait three days. (And wipe the drool from my chin.)

I felt bad cheating on my old chiropractor, but, truth be told, he wasn't really helping me all that much and I was just going back because it was free. The new chiropractor, though... yeah, he's free, too. (And he offers massage!)

"Dr. Jack," as Cutesy McGee at the front desk calls him, is probably all of 30, if even that. He looks dapper in his black scrubs, and has the harried look of a guy who is trying to do seventy five things at once. (Probably because he is.)

He took x-rays of my back and it turns out that my right hip is (to use a technical term) "all cocked up." And my lumbar spine is crooked. And my neck is curved the wrong way. And I'm single.

Oh, wait, that just slipped out.

To fix my hip, Dr. Jack will actually slam his body into my bent knee. I'll admit it, it's hot. I try to simply exhale, but, well, it comes out as more of a gasp. And (this is the sad part) I want him to think I'm awesome, so I relax my neck as much as humanly possible before he cracks it -- and I want you to know, not everyone can do this. I developed it through years of trust-building exercises in acting class. I doubt he even notices.

Tommy, the massage therapist, is an enormous muscle with hands that turn my back into pre-cooked meatloaf. Sweet as hell, but if you didn't know it, you'd be scared. Especially if he was taking his fist, jamming it into your hip socket, and swiveling your leg around. (He's good at what he does -- and likes Sinead O'Connor!)

It's the highlight of my day, going to the doctor. Which, now that I've written it down, makes me kind of sad.

why online dating is so much FUN

I'm on a dating website that will, based on the questions you answer, match you up with potential mates of your preference. They'll give you a match percentage, a friendship percentage, and an enemy percentage. Some people pay attention to these things, and some people simply pay attention to BOOBS. (Not that I display any on my page. It's just that I have them.)

Thou shalt not mock thy suitors, but with suitors like these, who needs enemies?

A sampling of my inbox of late:

From otherguy832* (52% match, 62% friend, 36% enemy)
Subject: I know your ex!

The subject line was only to peak your interest in my fascinating e-mail. My name is Roberto, found your profile to up beat and positive all qualities that I look for in a woman. How was your weekend ? I spent Sunday skating the line of heterosexuality by going on a fall hike, with a guy friend of mine, to see the leaves. Topped off with a picnic at the summit. I did get some great pictures, while I am secure in my manhood this story should remain between us! Talk to you soon.

From LawGuy1 (78% match, 87% friend, 17% enemy):

(no subject)

geek.

From guythree111 (83% match, 84% friend, 15% enemy)

Subject: Erudite Epicure seeks Sexy Svengali for Succor and Sin

"Keats was wrong. The art of the urn is maybe superior to real life because in most cases, the anxiety/excitement leading up to an event far exceeds the event itself. The images depicted on the urn are frozen in that moment of anticipation: the lover anticipating the kiss, the tree hovering between summer and fall. While that prelude to a kiss is often superior to the actual kiss, we cannot deprive ourselves of the potential satisfaction. Is that why the persona chooses reality? Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth."

"Shut up and kiss me, you fool…"

Howdy. First, I must beg clemency for I am relatively new at this. Second, your profile, while more expressive than most, is still vague enough to beg the questions: no sarcasm or smarminess? Just sheer spirited and sanguine sincerity? What the hell's her deal? Fret not, young lady, mystery and candor can be very big turn-ons (or turn-offs, depending on how one plays his or her (in this case, her) hand and with whom one is playing. You're in luck). You've cast a rather wide net, so I'll try and be brief:

[Then he spends fourteen paragraphs explaining himself.]

p.s. - You had me at "I'll make you laugh. I'll make you think. I'll make you think about laughing. Then you'll laugh more. (Or your money back!)". you win. No refund necessary...

p.p.s. - Hit me with your number when you mail me back - better yet, just call me - I'm much better on the phone. In person, well, forget about it, you can't even imagine…

p.p.p.s. - I lied. You really had me at "You're the guy for me if you are super-duper smart, with a terrific sense of humor and a passion that drives you to your own definition of greatness. You're self-aware and thoughtful, and not too smelly (I'd eventually like to sleep in your shirt)"...

p.p.p.p.s. - [in a remarkable turn of events, he continues.]

p.p.p.p.p.s. - [then he asks me about Greece]

p.p.p.p.p.p.s. - [and then, at this point, I fell asleep]

And my ABSOLUTE favorite...

From JuanCarlosDos (0% match, 1% friend, 65% enemy)

Subject: I love you!

A nice woman equal to you only so if you want to marry me

Tell me, how did I get so lucky??

*names have been changed to protect the innocently guilty.

oddities for the odd

Excuse me while I kiss this guy:

The refrain of the song that plays in aerobics is, I'm guessing, supposed to be saying "That's right, that's right. Move your body" but instead sounds like it's saying "Basmati! Basmati! Move your body!"

The guy on the sidewalk who is hawking for the gold store is constantly, to my ears, saying "Coincide! Check it out!"

And have you heard that Maroon 5 song, So This Is Goodbye? Me neither. But I did hear that fabulous track, Solipsistic Guy!

How Now Brown, ur Chicken?

I've been buying brown eggs recently because they're the only ones in the grocery store that aren't sold in styrofoam containers. The only drawback is that I hard boil them, and there's something about the brown shells that makes them kind of, well, rubbery. It's disconcerting to crack your egg and have it bounce back up at you.

Haiku For-u

Yesterday I wrote a poem that I felt represented my romantic experience lately:

Online dating guy

Was I more fun when I was

Imaginary?

In response, my friend Christina, who has the plague, created a poem that she felt represented her experience lately:

I think it's swine flu

Sniffling, coughing, achy, plus

I'm sneezing bacon

Speaking of sneezing...

Did you see that the weather on Sunday is Partly Cloudy with a chance of Widespread Flu?

stuff that has nothing to do with anything. (maybe.)

I had a date the other night that I thought was scheduled for a different night, so I didn't leave the house dressed the way I might normally dress for a first date. Luckily I was non-dowdy enough to actually go on the date and not reschedule it. I wasn't 100% confident about my outfit, though, so I asked Fernando if what I was wearing was ok.

"I wouldn't pretend I wasn't there to meet you if I saw you wearing that outfit."

Good old Nando. Always showering me with compliments.

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I left the house the other morning and saw my breath. [insert long, boring, complaint-filled paragraph with lots of muttering and head-shaking here.]

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There were lots of toilets in Greece where you weren't allowed to flush the toilet paper in the toilet. Which made for a lot of smelly bathrooms.

Also, on the island of Santorini, they tell you not to drink the water. And then they charge you €1.50 for a bottle of it. I smell a conspiracy (and a bathroom)!

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I spread my scarf across my face the other day and asked Fernando if I looked like a spooky ghost. "No," he said, "You look like you have pizza stretched across your face."

Oh, right. Duh.

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I cheated on my chiropractor today. I love him, I really do, and I'll be forever indebted to him for introducing me to the many joys of bone cracking. However, my new chiropractor? Ok, yeah, he's ridiculously hot. He knows it, too, so that ratchets it down a notch, but now I have to start thinking about what kind of underwear I wear to my appointments!

The best part? His office likes to focus on massage. (I got poked in the psoas today.) This could be the start of something wonderful...

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I'm reading a 920 page book right now and I've slogged all the way through to page 620. I'm not in love with it, but I'm committed to it at this point. My favorite part so far has been when the narrator described something unpleasant as "moisturizing with Tabasco."

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Crazy homeless man who haunts the 53rd Street station was back tonight. I took notes as he dictated. Learn ye this:

"When you sleep with the boss, you never have to work."

"The Senator had to beat his wife."

"Lesbians don't know they're women. Mental illness!"

Kettle, honey? It's pot. You're black.

am I a crazy cat lady? probably.

Yes, there were lovely sunsets.

Yes, there were ancient ruins.

Yes, there were fabulously good-looking family members.

But most of all, there were cats. Hundreds and hundreds of Greek cats. Stray cats aren't that weird -- I have a family of them in my backyard. But you know what IS weird? Stray dogs. We really don't have them here, and I'm grateful for that. Because if a stray dog gets hungry enough, he might just eat you.

A stray cat would never do that. (would you, kitties?)

Greece Day 11

So, I'm back in Heathrow.

But this time, I'm on a pay-as-you-go computer, with only four minutes and forty two seconds to crank this one out. So be prepared for typos and shorthand.

Here are some observations from the trip, in brief:

1) Greek armpits smell a lot like armpits.
2) Business Class is THE way to fly. Sitting in the middle seat of a three seater in the row behind a toddler is NOT.
3) The world is small. The woman I sat next to on my flight from London to Athens passed me on the footpath from Imerovigli to Fira in Santorini.
4) The Mediterranean is the most beautiful body of water I've ever seen. So beautiful, in fact, that I had to strip my clothes off in front of my paretns and jump into it because it was so tempting. (My mother took pictures of my pile of clothes, just as evidence.)
5) It's interesting to be somewhere so beautiful on your own. (Yes, I was with my family, but I was romantically alone.) Some of the sunsets were so moving and so beautiful that I wanted someone to share them with... and yet, there was no one. I had to keep reminding myself to show them to my self.

And now I'm out of time. More soon, I promise!

Greece, Day 1

Dearest readers,

While I write this (on a British keyboard, which hides some of the important keys and makes it difficult to type), most of you are still asleep. Because it's just shy of six o'clock in the morning.

But I, like the world traveler I am, have been up for HOURS. (Which is just a fancy way of saying I haven't slept yet.)

My mother, father and I left New York last night and, as a gift for mother's day, my dad upgraded two tickets to Business Class. And I, because I'm cute, charming, and the apple of my dad's eye*, actually got to sit with my mom in Business Class. That's right, folks, I flew Business Class. Where the seats recline (and incline, and do yoga poses all at the touch of a button) and the staff are extraordinarily nice, and they give you free wine and cheese and warm towels and free Burt's Bees moisturizer, and just stop short of stripping you of your clothes, giving you a massage and returning your clothes to you washed and pressed.

This, my friends, is the way to travel.

I ate warmed nuts. (Keep your comments to yourself, I'm traveling with my mother!) I ate ravioli. I ate a cheese plate. I ate Ghiradelli chocolate. I ate the airplane.

My mother and I engaged in a little bit of earplug theatre (a special kind of puppet show where the puppets are little, yellow, foamy, better) and we flung sleep masks at each other. We had seat races. I watched 1/3 of Dr. Zhivago. (Omar Sharif used to be cute!)

And now we're in the British Airways lounge in Heathrow, where they have free cereal, internet, juice, CHAMPAGNE, guys with cute accents, all the coffee you could possibly want, and slabs of meat. (It is Britain, afterall.) And cookies. Lots of cookies.

Our flight to Greece has been delayed, so we have another couple of hours to kill here. I plan to keep eating, listening to the cute accents and trying to stay awake.

Because on the flight to Greece I'm back in coach.

*sigh.*

I recently discovered I get BBC America! Delight!

There's a good chance you'll be charmed and delighted by the clip below:

If you're not, you have absolutely no sense of humor.

two lists

Ten things I find outrageously irritating:
1. the people at Grand Central who INSIST on coming down the fully loaded staircase when there's a perfectly good empty one right behind them.
2. when the lobby of my building smells like chicken. It's on an erratic schedule so I can't even be prepared for it.
3. my office computer, which is refusing to behave
4. the new shampoo I bought that smells great but makes my hair look like deflated spaghetti
5. just enough post-nasal drip to make my tummy feel funny
6. the fact that I don't know what to be when I grow up
7. did I mention the people at Grand Central?
8. constantly increasing postage prices
9. people who make out in public places as if they don't know that it hurts my feelings
10. whistling.

Ten blissful, non-stressful things:
1. four day weekends (thanks, Judiasm!)
2. warm coffee that's not too sweet or too bitter
3. festive, new, purple running sneakers
4. yoga in the morning
5. upcoming vacations to Greece (see one of our hotels here)
6. the qi-gong tui na ladies who operate a cash-only business in my neighborhood
7. a bathtub full of warm pudding (I imagine)
8. breezy sunsets
9. being 95% of the way through the most recent New Yorker magazine (before week's end!)
10. my couch

invaluable insights after a day of dain bramage

First: How cool is this? Who knew the space station took that much planning?

Second: I'm disturbed by this. (And the fact that I can't seem to embed anything today.)

Third: Why is it that yogurt, no matter how little of it I get on my blouse, permeates the fabric so thoroughly that it's almost impossible to avoid a stain?

Fourth: As awesome people, we rock. Why don't we roll? Poor old roll got the short end of the deal on that one, if you ask me.

Fifth: My brain hurts.

the things I can't say

Sadly, the beau and I broke up recently. And one of the hardest parts of breaking up, for me, is figuring out what to do with all the little winks I've gotten from the universe since then that he would find apt or funny or cute. Things I want to tell him, but can't.

So I'm telling you instead. Because, well, they're apt and funny and cute and that's what you don't pay me for.

Thing 1:
A little over a week ago, the beau and I walked into an American Apparel store and I saw this adorable turquoise checked shirt (that would really only look good on a Super-Hipster -- or perhaps my extremely metrosexual boyfriend from five years ago), and pointed it out to him. He scowled (rightfully) and said, "only a Super-Hipster would wear that."

Now, secretly, if the shirt had been cut for a woman, I might have bought it for myself. Except that I look corpse-like in turquoise, and really don't need another blouse.

That foray into American Apparel sparked an argument (which I won't go into here) that essentially culminated in the unraveling of our relationship. The funny part is that this morning, on the subway, I sat next to a woman wearing the female version of that shirt.

Thing 2:
Eddie Izzard has been on my radar a lot lately. A friend emailed me today to say that a friend of hers had never seen Dress to Kill (arguably the funniest thing since sliced bread) and so my friend reported remedying that situation immediately. Then, my coach emailed me and prescribed a viewing of Dress to Kill so that I could get out of my head and into my belly(laughs). And THEN, my boss sent me a link (which neatly wraps this whole thing up in a bow) to an article about Eddie Izzard running 43 marathons in 52 days.

Did I mention the beau is a marathoner?

Yeah. Winking. I'm telling you. The whole universe is just winking at me. Like it's got galactic Tourette's or something.

a random story from my childhood

I can't be more than 13 when Darwin starts working for us. "Darwin" isn't her real name -- I mean, it is, legally, but it's not the one she was born with. At some point in her not so distant past, she tossed off something nice like Sheryl or Diane or Amy and adopted the mantle of Ye Olde Evolutionist(e). We're not sure why, but she seems normal (kind of), and my parents are in a bit of a desperate situation (what with Geraldine The Stupid Nanny having driven the Ford without oil all summer, effectively ruining the car my sister was supposed to learn to drive on, and thereby getting her ass shipped back to Glasgow post post haste) and so they hire her.

I've had a hundred nannies before, and I'll have a hundred more before I'm through, but none will be as awe-some (or perhaps awe-ful) as Darwin.

She stands a full five foot three. Now, I'm 13, so I haven't reached my stilty five eight yet, but I'm not far from it. But whereas I'm about, I don't know, 110 pounds, Darwin's got me beat by easily fifty pounds. She's kind of like a caramel apple, but weirder.

She's got eczema, which is fine, but she wears these ratty-tatty gloves to cover it up, which are not so fine. They're dirtier than the pair of socks I wore into the garage last week (because I'm 13 and the thought of getting a pair of slippers from upstairs was tooooo exhausting). They look like my dad's old underwear -- grayish, stretched out, and pathetic. She wears them all the time -- driving, cleaning, reading, and, worst of all, cooking. I'd almost prefer chunks of leprotic skin falling into my dinner than the shaky-flaky variety I'm getting from those gloves. (I could eat around large chunks of hand.) And she's not that great a cook, so it's not as if I'm being transported by delectable dinners to distract me from this likelihood.

Darwin does lots of things wrong -- she T boned the car the first week she was driving it and she vacuums in the nude (I have this on my sister's good authority, as she used to skip school and take her boyfriends to the house to make out until she discovered this disturbing phenomenon, which probably put her off making out for a whole month -- which is a long time for a high school sophomore), but for me, where she is about to go terribly wrong is in having a discussion with a 13 year old about Satan.

See, Darwin's wiccan, and, surprisingly, I don't hold that against wiccans. But she's strangely proselytizey, and decides (one dark and rainy (and I might add, super-spooky) night) to accompany me downstairs to the basement and talk to me about Satan.

"You know," she says, ironically brushing off the sofa with her dusty-yucky gloves before plopping down on it, "you should never tempt Satan."

A cricket chirps in the corner, and the cat slinks off to stalk it.

"Because Satan might feel moved to prove himself to you."

"Really?" I ask, casually. "Hmmmm."

I swallow the lump in my throat and change the subject, all the while thinking what the hell does it take to tempt Satan? Am I tempting Satan just by thinking about him? What's he going to do to prove himself to me? I'M GOING TO DIE OR, WORSE, END UP LIKE DARWIN!

That night, I can't sleep. Because, you know, I'm tempting Satan. Just by trying not to think about him. I don't pray to god (because, well, we're not close, and that feels like cheating) but I think horrible thoughts about serial killers (who probably tempted Satan) and the creepy axe-wielding man who lives under my bed and will hack my ankles to bits if I try to get out of bed. I sweat. I panic. I cry.

Finally, with the grace of a gazelle escaping the jaws of the impending cheetah, I leap from my bed and hustle my 13 year old butt down the stairs. I burst into my parents' room with the silence of a freight train and touch my mom on the shoulder.

"Mom!?!? I can't sleep! I'm afraid I'm tempting Sataaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan!"

I believe it was shortly thereafter that Darwin discovered the Galapagos.

yay! bug!

It has not been terribly happy in k8's nyc, so to compensate, I give you this:

I blame summer

My brain is turning somewhat to mush. I blame summer.

But that's neither here nor there. Look at what you can do on Facebook!

Hooray! I love to poke fanny!

And now that you know what you CAN do, here are some things you can't do in the state of New Jersey:

1. Throw a bad pickle in the streets of Trenton
2. Be a cat and not wear a bell to alert the birds of your whereabouts in Cresskill
3. Frown in Bernards Township

Who knew?

And you probably CAN eat this, but why would you, ever??
Caffeinated Beef Jerky! (Run!!!!)

And, as Fernando said this afternoon, "I think I've caused enough dumb for one day."

I'm using my powers for good. I think.

There are many things you need to know. And who better to supply them to you than me, right?
First, when Fernando and I escape on our Costa Rican holiday, we'll be staying in this hotel:

For several reasons.

1. It's a plane
2. Your neighbors are monkeys
3. It's in Costa Rica
4. It's a plane

Second, Apple is releasing its newest operating system, Snow Leopard, sometime soon. What I want to know is when are they releasing the upgrade to the kick-ass operating system, Def Leppard?

Third, I'm awfully fond of a very geeky, computer-related comic called xkcd. Occasionally it's too geeky, even for me, but the following comic had us rolling in the hallway recently:

Fourth: What's the last thing you think to hear a bike messenger saying into his phone? For me, it was easily, "Dude, 'polemical' is just another word for 'controversial.'"

Fifth, I love Mimi Smartypants. Because she loves Smashed Rats:

"If I have lunchtime errands, the route I take involves crossing the same street twice (which is totally possible, fuck you Heraclitus). This is because of crazy construction activity and blocked-off sidewalks. This could be kind of a drag, but now I look forward to it because of SMASHED RAT!

"A smashed squirrel is a pretty standard thing in Chicago. You know the kind—completely devoid of organs or guck (where did that go? stuck to the car tires? spread and diffused and soaked into the pavement?), flush with the street, basically just a flat gray strip of matted fur. But a smashed rat is something special! Rats are usually more wily and less interested in crossing streets, so they do not become smashed as often. Plus, that tail! The State Street Smashed Rat is really perfectly smashed, too: you can see the outline of his little face and body and the tail is still long and pinkish despite being smashed.

"Obviously, when I pass Smashed Rat I need to say “SMASHED RAT!” Smashed rat is the new dead bird. Yesterday as I was waiting for the light to change I said, “smashed rat” and a fellow pedestrian heard and gave me a strange look. So I pointed down and showed him the smashed rat so he could SHARE THE JOY."

Sixth, did you ever wonder what it looked like when trucks filled with various things tipped over? Then you need to go to http://www.truckspills.com/ and see images like when the truck full of chickens tipped over:

May I recommend the whale guts? (Just slightly too disgusting to post here!)

Ah... technology!

I was shopping online today for, um, personal items, and discovered hilarity waiting for me:


(if you can't see what's funny, click on the photo to make it bigger.)

Also, if you've ever wondered what I do for my living, click here. Just don't die of excitement.

Also, it's proof positive that Time Warner is raping and pillaging its customers when you call them to tell them you want to pay less and they offer you a better package, with more goodies, for less money. Oh yeah, now I've got the "All the Best" triple play for $13 less a month than my old "Nothing Good" package.

By the way, it's really difficult to post this entry under the category of "important stuff you need to know."

it's a miracle there's any space in my brain at all

You are very lucky readers, folks. Not everyone gets to reap the fruits of a diligent soul scouring the world for useful knowledge and then compiling it all together for you.

(Ok, that's not true. This is a public blog. Everyone could read it. Just not everyone does.)

The Booger Affair
Apparently, wall-booger-wiping is something of a pandemic.

(And here I thought you were supposed to wipe your boogers under the couch.)

Did you know?
Remember the Monkees? There was Davey Jones (the cute one), Mickey Dolenz (the crazy one), Peter Tork (the red headed one), and Mike Nesmith (the other one). Well, turns out that Mike Nesmith's mom, Bette, created Liquid Paper.

Bet you didn't (need to) know that one.

Audio Illusion
If you sit very, very quietly in the pantry at my office, you might think you were scuba diving. Because the ice maker makes this weird gurbley sound that really shouldn't be coming from an ice maker.

Also, if you sit very, very quietly in the pantry at my office, you're weird.

Optical Illusion
While we're on the topic of mistakes (not that I make them), I saw a link the other night for what I thought was Do Rito Slate Night.

Go ahead and check it out: www.doritoslatenight.com

Updates on Jesus and the Tiger
The beau came up with a fabulous idea for a new piece of artwork in my apartment building hallway -- just a picture of the tiger with a scrap of Jesus-colored robe dangling from the corner of his mouth.

Take that, multinational deity!

On the way to work
I love my commute. This week I heard a dad saying, as he dropped his little girl off at nursery school, "She's so excited to see you! God knows she's sick of us!"

Also, there was a pair of fat man pants left on the windshield of a car. I chuckled to myself as I imagined this was due to a recreation of the Whitesnake video gone terribly, terribly wrong.

Fashion Basic
I have a skirt that I love to wear in the summer -- it's linen and lightweight and in my world it stands in for shorts, which are a kind of clothing I don't believe in. It recently developed two holes in it and was destined for the rag heap. UNTIL... I realized that if I cut the tags off of it, I could wear it inside out!

Yeah, I'm sexy.

Hilarity and Vitriol, Rolled Into One


(if the embedding doesn't work for you, go here: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/860-Call-of-Juarez-Bound-in-Blood)

why I'll never fly Evil Spirit Airlines again

I'm cheap. I'll admit it. But there are some things that just aren't worth saving the hundred bucks it would have cost me to fly Jet Blue. To wit:

1. I showed up 75 minutes early for my flight (my fault) which was then delayed 90 minutes (theirs). This gave me the opportunity to sit next to a lovely woman who, I'm not kidding, said "fuck" every other word. I texted this my friend Christina, who told me that in response, I should just start randomly saying "poop" to no one. I considered this, but didn't want to poop -- I mean, stoop -- to their level.

(poop.)

2. Evil Spirit Airlines will book your seat for you, but if you want to sit somewhere other than in the bathroom, you have to pay anywhere from $12 to $20 on top of your ticket price. Needless to say, I sat in the bathroom. Where I didn't have any snacks, drinks, or luggage.

3. Something about this airline breeds children. I've never seen so many of them in my life. I swear there were more when we landed than there were when we took off. And they. Were. All. Crying.

4. Ever been on a plane with creaky arm rests and lots of children? Yeah, don't.

5. On the flight down to Florida, we hit some of the worst turbulence I've ever seen in my life. It's sad when the thought of your own death provokes whimpers of "but I haven't DONE anything yet!!"

6. We flew on an Airbus that "was only two years old!" (hooray!) However, Airbuses are made in France, and apparently, in the last two years, there has been such a dramatic decline in the number of French people who pee that the designers thought two toilets would amply serve 156 people. In horrible turbulence. And we were told repeatedly that we should really use the one in the back, since NOBODY can linger near the cockpit door. NOBODY! EVER!

7. Also, French people must be very, very, short, as I am a mere 5'8" and my knees were jammed into the seat in front of me. Even nicer, the seat in front of me reclined while mine was frozen in place, because it was broken. So I read my book like the nerdy kid in high school (which I was anyway), a mere six inches from my face. I considered crying (which I also did in high school).

8. I'm barfophobic. We've discussed this at length. So when turbulence gets really bad on a plane, I don't think "OH MY GOD WE'RE GOING DOWN!" I think "OH MY GOD WHO'S GONNA BARF?!?!" And perhaps this is well warranted:

8A: On the way home, two rows behind me, before we even took off, a flight attendant arrived on the scene with a bag.
"Here," she said. "Wipe that up, and throw it in here. And then this bag's for later."
For me, hearing this was like seeing an accident up ahead and resisting the urge to find out if the motorcyclist lost his head in the collision with the semi. But resisted I did!
When I walked by later (to pee in the one bathroom), the offending guy was covered in napkins, so it was hard to tell. But I'm still convinced he barfed. Because, hell, it's Evil Spirit Airlines!

8B: The landing was extended for some reason, and we ended up flying over Queens, Long Island, up into the Bronx, to the Canadian border, back around via Arizona, and landed at LGA. It was a little bumpy, but nothing like the turbulence we suffered earlier. Nonetheless, I saw a flight attendant waggling a barf bag at a passenger during landing, which is a rare sight. (Luckily I stealthily kept my ipod on under my hair so I didn't have to hear what was going on.)
Anyway, as we were deplaning, she got on the radio and said the regular "welcome to LaGuardia, the local time is blah blah blah" crap, but added the ever so lovely "we know there were lots of upset stomachs during this flight, so if any of you have any bags... full of... sickness, please feel free to deposit them in the garbage as you leave the plane."

Oh Jet Blue, why was I so foolishly led astray??

(poop!)

when the hell did it become august?

I'm just saying, time is going by too quickly. I'm getting old.

In an effort to delay the inevitable, I bring the following things to your attention:

1. Tuesdays with Nando
Just like the best selling book, Tuesdays with Morrie, (which my mother and I detest and call "Wednesdays with Dipshit"), this tome is full of charming, heartwarming episodes. Like the time I said to Fernando, "I have a weird patch of skin falling off my finger. I think it's leprosy," and he responded by shouting "UNCLEAN!" and pointing me out of our office. Other winning chapters involve Fernando's salads smelling of egg farts (and driving my boss out of the office) and the old acting headshot postcard of me that we've taped to the mailbox so that when I'm out of the office, Fernando has someone to talk to.

Stay tuned... Mondays with Kate will be out soon.

2. Ye Olde Oral Fixations
Remember Freshen Up Gum? The gum that squirted green goo into your mouth when you bit the center of it? Why was that ever popular? It was easily one of the most disgusting things not actually marketed to kids.

I was thinking of that the other day because Fernando gave me spearmint gum (and I don't eat spearmint gum, but figured I'd try it again, just to see if I was missing out on anything -- and I'm not) and it tasted just as I remember Freshen Up tasting. This, of course, led me down a slippery slope, recalling Chewels and Velamints, too.

Crap, I'm old.

3. Pearls before Swine Flatulation
The beau said something absolutely lovely recently. "I knew I was going to have fun with you," he said, "but I didn't think I would like you this much."

I smiled, and accidentally kicked him under the table.

"I'd say you're like a ray of sunshine, but you're more like..."

"A funny looking cloud?" I offered.

"No, if you were sunshine, that would imply it was all dark and gloomy before you came along. You're more like... You know what you're like? You're like a pig's fart in a candlelit room."

Take that, Shakespeare!

4. Two for the price of one
My mother was recently diagnosed with a liver cyst, which you can really only get by talking nasty to your children. (I told her to "fucking cut that shit out" years ago, but does she listen? Goddamnit, of course not!) She went in to have it removed yesterday, and apparently, it wasn't one monster cyst, it was two.

One for me and one for my cyster.

5. Watch Out!

achtung! das emotions!

I have this little heart, and all these big feelings.

And sometimes my little heart just breaks because it can't help itself.

Filled up with love, or loneliness, or connection, or bliss.

And joy and sadness flood my body like sweet and sour sauce.

With gentleness, I pack the goodies back where they belong, and take my tear stained face for a sojourn on the pillow.

Silly little heart, trying to swim in the deep end without its floaties!

hi ho, hi ho, it's off to work I go!

1. A co-worker is temporarily situated between two of our stranger birds, and recently reported this conversation to me:

(Oddity1 enters with a paper bag.)

(Oddity2, hearing the bag, runs across the hall.)

Oddity2: (almost violently) WHAT DID YOU GET?

Oddity1: Eggs.

Oddity2: WHAT???

Oddity1: Eggs. Eggs.

Oddity2 (again, disappointed) Oh. I thought you said peanut butter and jelly.

(She exits, sadly.)

2. My boss brings me gifts every now and then. Like this picture of her little friend, Moogie, and his little friend, Jacob.

(Adorable, right?)

3. Fernando recently went to the accounting department to look at the firm's Verizon bill, when the following conversation happened:

AccountingGirl: I don't know which bill you need.

Fernando: If you just give me the folder, I'll take a leak.

AccountingGirl: (blink) (blink)

Fernando: I mean, I'll take a leak.

AccountingGirl: (blink) (blink)

Fernando: I mean, just give me the bills, please.

4. I accidentally told a partner I was talking out my ass the other day. I'm not sure which was sadder -- the fact that I was talking out my ass, or that I felt compelled to announce it.

5. We introduced my boss to Ken Lee this morning. Have you met him?

things I love (in no apparent order)

I love:

• when it becomes clear that the yowling neighbor next to you is actually singing along to Beyonce and not just suffering severe indigestion
• a commute that yields a parade of four yellow vehicles in a row: taxi, schoolbus, Arizona Iced Tea van, taxi
• the strange talismanic crap little boys carry around with them - stormtrooper in one hand, hammer and lizard in the other
• cashews
• Fernando's sister, Michelle, who laughs really heartily at everything
• the feeling of the beau's arms protecting me from the scary, scary alarm clock
• the existence of pudding skin, although not the skin itself
• the kind of blue bic pens that I can see how much of the ink I've already used while writing in my journal
• "otiose" (the new word I learned in my book today. It means "1. being at leisure; idle; indolent, 2. ineffective or futile, 3. superfluous or useless.")
• certain shades of blue that feel endlessly deep
• the power of my own body (and I mean that in a kick-you-punch-you kind of way, not a hubba-hubba kind of way, although that's fun, too.)
• coaching, but especially seeing the light in someone's eyes that comes from revelation

astrological truths revealed!

Sometimes I think horoscopes are right.

Like the one I got on the day of my cousin's baby shower:
"Your family is abuzz with some new plan -- maybe a vacation or a party, or maybe something more practical. You'd much rather just get on with it than keep exploring options, though."

Or the one I got last week, which could really apply to just about any day of my life:
"You're still all fired up with good energy, and you should be especially drawn to children and others young at heart. Have fun with your daily activities, and you may just inspire others to do the same."

But sometimes, they're beyond right. They're personal.

The other day I had the most ridiculous commute to work ever. There was a local train two stations away with its brakes in emergency, so after waiting 20 minutes, the station agent finally told us about the situtation. I waited another 10 minutes, as these things often clear up on their own, but even after 10 minutes, there wasn't any sign of a train. So I grabbed my suitcase (which makes commuting even more fun) and hopped on a downtown local, so I could take an express train from 36th street.

Long story short, an hour after I walked into my local station, I was on an express train that hadn't even gotten BACK to the station I started from.

And what did the stars have to say about that?
"It's a good time for you to drill down and forget about the big picture for now -- you've got to make the trains run on time before you can think about laying down any new tracks!"

Creepy!

Fernando is still trying to kill me

I'm not paranoid, I swear! Here are five more ways in which my dear, sweet, wonderful officemate is trying to kill me. (Or at least drive me to take my own life.)

(You can see the first five ways in which he's trying to kill me here.)

6. He steals the garbage can
In an effort to be environmental, Fernando and I share a garbage can. One can, one bag, less plastic in the oceans... we're essentially good people. Except when Fernando HOGS the garbage can WAY over the halfway mark between our desks. He claims it's the cleaning lady who does this, but I know he's using some weird telekinetic voodoo to inch it over to his side while I'm not looking.

7. He got me hooked on pitted dates
Once upon a time, Fernando came back from the 99 cent store with a container of pitted dates. They were cracky good. We ate them until that container was gone. Then we bought another one. And another one. And another one. We ate them like they were going out of style. He turned me into an ADDICT! I'm like a vegetarian zombie who roams around moaning "DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATES"

8. He forces me to write songs
Fernando will take anything I say and turn it into the refrain of a song. For example, I'll say something like "it's time for a pitted date" and he'll spice it up and jazzify it, chanting "it's time for a pitted date (oh yeah!)/ it's time for a pitted date (you know it!)/ you asked for the time, and instead you got this rhyme / it's time for a pitted date!" and then I end up singing the pitted date song for the next two-to-three hours at least. My other coworkers think I'm crazy, but really, without Fernando I'd be totally sane. I swear. I'd never make up a song all by myself...

(Note to self: don't write about the pitted date song, or it will get re-stuck in your head.)

9. He stopped eating pitted dates!
After introducing me to the heroin-like fruit, Fernando stopped eating them. Because they had calories and nutritional value. See, Fernando has this strange obsession with the Eat-This-Not-That kind of news reporting that can be found on such reputable sites as Yahoo! Mail. He continually alerts me to which fast food joints have the worst grades in the fat/calories department, even though he knows I haven't eaten fast food since high school. He also thinks he's going to die of visceral fat. (I periodically remind him that he has to HAVE visceral fat to die from it.)

10. He drinks like a fish
Back in the day (around the time of the pitted dates), I vowed I would drink more water. You know, because it was good for me. I announced my intention to Fernando, making it more likely that I would actually follow through with it, and he joined in.

Now he drinks WAAAAAY more than I do, and he's got this weird clicky throat noise that makes me worried that water is going to come out his nose if he holds his head at the wrong angle. (I secretly want to test out this theory, but how could I subtly convince him to drink water while leaning over the arm of his chair?)



Now, I just want you all to know that I am NOT THREATENED by the fact that Fernando eats better than I do, drinks more water than I do, is generally more charming and attractive than I am, and that when he's out, fewer people come to visit.

Not threatened at all.

(Although, you should also probably know that one time he made me try to pop popcorn with my cellphone. I know, crazy, right??)