hello i am cold

I did not cheat at all, and this was too good not to post. Via mesawyou.

1. Put your iTunes, Windows Media Player, etc. on shuffle
2. For each question, press the next button to get your answer.
3. YOU MUST WRITE THAT SONG NAME DOWN NO MATTER HOW SILLY IT SOUNDS.

( songs meme... )

I feel compelled to do this book meme because I have made such an effort to read books, and I am curious. Even though there is no Hemingway or Faulkner on here, so what the hell? And Mitch Albom? And I had to add the hyphen to Moby-Dick myself. What kind of list is this?

( the list )

Sigh. 64%. I CAN DO BETTER.

We went down to L.A. this weekend as kind of a spontaneous last-minute trip. As some of you know, last week was a pretty bad one. Elijah and his grandmother (Tiff's mother) were in a really horrible car accident, and had to be extracted from the car with the Jaws of Life.

As you can see from the ten million photos of him on my Flickr stream, Elijah is doing fine, thank god. But Tiff's mom is really badly injured. The car accident broke her ribs, her pelvis, her legs, knocked out her teeth, and broke her wedding band. As of a couple of days ago she also has a MRSA and is in quarantine. Yet she is lucky to be alive, and we are all incredibly grateful.

I'd been in touch with my family a lot by phone, but it was really hard not to be there. In the meantime, work was really busy: a lot of late nights, a lot of working through the weekends. So the first chance I had to go down there and spend some time with them was this weekend.

It ended up being a really fabulous time. It really was about spending time with Caroline, Tiffany, and Elijah, and we basically focused on that. On Friday, we drove down and got there in the afternoon. Shawn came over and joined us for a small barbecue and pool party, and after everyone had gone home and gone to bed, it was great to sit outside and gossip with her.

The next day we went over and hung out with Caroline and the fam again, and then headed down to Redondo to have dinner with BFF Brian and my friends Steve and Melissa (whose wedding was in Hawaii if you remember that trip). Unfortunately, we found out they just lost a friend of theirs to cancer. In fact, Ian had just read his obituary in the New York Times, without realizing it was their friend. He died on the same day as the car accident. Also on that day, one of Tiff's students, a seven-year-old, was found drowned; he was revived but is now in a coma with probable brain damage.

Despite the sadness of that, it was wonderful to see Steve and Melissa (and Brian of course). We all headed over to their house to play Rock Band and look at Jupiter through Brian's telescope. (Man, that was cool; we saw four moons and the bands and everything.) Then we headed back to the parentals, slept, got up, had brunch and a good talk with Caroline, and then headed back.

The drive home kind of sucked. My car air conditioning doesn't seem to be working, and it was stifling hot. There was also a lot of traffic. I'd had fun driving around the L.A. freeways all weekend (I do love driving in L.A.) but six hours on I-5 behind a seemingly endless series of SUVs hitting their brakes is not a fun way to spend a Sunday. Plus, I missed seeing my cousin, who was headed back from a camping trip---we wanted to stay, but both had to work today, and I had to get some grading done last night, even.

Anyway, we're back, and I'm so glad we went. Having my family just a (long) drive away is luxurious. I mean, look at that face. How do you not want to spend a weekend with that? (P.S. Favorite picture at the moment.)

So on the last day of Vegas I was playing Bingo with my friends at Terrible's Casino, with my Mr. Terrible Bingo Dauber, and I wasn't doing very well. Usually you at least get tantalizingly CLOSE to a Bingo, providing suspense and entertainment, and I didn't even get close once. So I thought, man, I'm not very lucky today, am I.

And then I looked around at my husband and my friends, and thought about the friends who I'd spent the weekend with, and the VIP booth in the club and the dancing and the pre-party and the cabana and the Paris Las Vegas Hotel and Casino and the champagne buffets and the swimming pool and then my friends some more and my eyes welled up and I thought, no, I couldn't be more wrong. I am the luckiest girl in the whole world.

And then I thought, man I'm drunk.

It was still true, though.

It's a good day in California, my friends. A very good day.

And yes, Caroline and Tiffany are planning to tie the knot, as are David and Tyler. The girls are waiting until after the election, as far as I know, while David and Tyler are aiming for the fall. I love them all so much. I don't see how anyone can begrudge them this. Go California!

On Friday morning I taught my classes and then drove straight to the airport to go to Austin for Chris's baby shower. This is a very hoped for and already-loved baby. She has a great group of friends and a husband who is totally ready to be a dad, and it was a great party.

Chris and I met in Girl Scouts when we bonded over our mutual obsessive love of New Kids on the Block (shut up) and so it was entirely appropriate that NKOTB were on the Today Show on the very morning of my arrival! We watched it Friday night, and it was a total flashback, to be sitting with Chris watching New Kids! How many hours of our teenage lives were spent in exactly that way? (I kind of feel like I owe it to my 15-year-old self to get tickets for the reunion tour.)

This morning I was sleep deprived and taught some crappy classes, but I'll make up for them on Wednesday, when my classes will be awesome. I also have a flood of e-mails to answer, including one from another high school friend, who e-mailed me while I was at Chris's house, having found my blog! Chris and I were talking about how sometimes friends drift apart and friendships have a lifespan, especially when people are scattered across the country (damn you, scattered friends) but there are some friendships that are more like sisterhood, and you know they'll last a lifetime.

Still, it had been way too long since we'd sat and argued about which New Kid was the cutest. Great weekend.

Going through all the photos, of which there are at least 1,000, to pick highlights for Flickr I had to laugh remembering when we used to go to Europe with film, in cans, and if you brought 10 rolls of film, that was a lot of film. And you could not see what they looked like until you developed them. Remember how weird that was?

I am off to Austin tomorrow for the weekend, and although I wanted to get my travelogue written, there's been too much schoolwork and too much work work (we've been short-staffed all week and that one group of students is sucking the soul out of my body) to get it done. But you can look through the pictures and see where we went, and the things we saw.

Start here if you want to see all the photos in order.<.

The newest member of our team at work is A., and I hereby declare that it stands for Awesome. On the booze cruise on Friday, we discovered we had both been Girl Scouts and ended up singing "Make New Friends," in a round, to some Irish guy we'd just met. (Yes, there was champagne on the booze cruise.) She lives two blocks from me, loves The Office and says "that's what she said" with abandon, writes, reads, and loves to bike ride--we already are planning to take our bikes to Point Isabel when I get back from vacation next month.

On Saturday, we had a writing date at a cafe around the corner, and I thought it was really productive. I'm working on an idea for a YA novel and I figured out a few good moments/character points and KIND OF A PLOT. I am not going to go back and re-read it anymore because it's written so awkwardly... I'm going to keep pushing through and see if it coheres into something. I've never done the "writing date" thing before, so that was fun, and it was good to have someone to bounce ideas off of. Hopefully we'll make it a regular thing.

So that's the "new friends" part, and on the "old friends" tip, I booked my plane tickets today to go visit pippit in Austin! (Next up on the list are trips to Green Bay and Albuquerque.) She's having a baby shower soon, because she's having a baby. Holy shit. I've seen belly pictures and everything but it's too, too surreal. Hopefully I can go back to Austin when there's an actual baby for me to gaze upon and admire. Just to bring this little entryette full circle, I first met pippit when we were Girl Scouts together and discovered a mutual love for New Kids on the Block.

One is silver, the other is gold. That is all.

This hotel that they put me up in is fantastic. Say what you will about Paris, these Hilton people really know what they're doing. I left my cell charger at home... and they gave me a cell charger that fits my phone. My camera ran out of batteries and the gift shop was out of batteries... so they sent someone up to my room with batteries! They have a free 24-hour business center that has saved my life this weekend. They are fantastic.

Also, the guy from the University who picked us up from the airport and took us to dinner last night is charming and weirdly deferential, caring about our comfort (by which I mean me and the artist, Karin Carter) as if we were important people! Apparently the gallery openings have been known to have "hundreds" of people at them. I am really praying for fewer than "hundreds" of people. But Andy Warhol has exhibited in the gallery! So, me and Andy Warhol.

Speaking of 15 minutes of fame... (see what I did there?)... you have probably already heard that I am going to be on the TV on Monday. (My mother's response: "What's a blog?") It was crazy; I got an email yesterday and talked to a producer, and sent in some pictures of myself and I thought I kind of babbled and sounded dumb and they wouldn't pick me, but today she called me back and said she loved me and wants to be my best friend and can we fly you and your husband to New York? And I said Okay! And we have tickets to see Clay Aiken in Spamalot, too. Hee.

So, I don't know. I basically feel like I'm drunk all the time. (Maybe it's the altitude.) Everything is surreal and confusing and I can't keep track of anything. Like, I fly back on Saturday night and back out on Sunday morning. I have like 10 minutes to pack, and nothing whatsoever to wear on the TV. I also was emailed by a literary agent who has represented nothing I've ever heard of, but still! It's like every time I open my inbox something else insane has happened.

Oh, but here's some awesome serendipity on a much smaller scale: today I had the afternoon free, so I walked to a lunch place about a mile and a half away. The walk in the cold air was very badly needed. As I was walking I was thinking, sure, I have a great haircut, but I wish I'd had my eyebrows waxed at least once in the past six months. And I turned the corner and there was a salon. And they were open. And I got my eyebrows waxed. And they look awesome.

I hope this means the universe is on my side. Nice, universe. Nice, nice universe. Please let everything go well.

Heath Ledger is dead?

I got my author copy of Teaching the Novel and it is pretty. My blog is in the New York Times today. A reporter from ABC.com just called me and I said things (this is where it could all go horribly wrong, by the way). And this weekend is my fancy trip to Colorado where I will rock my new haircut and my fancy new dress and they will pay me money to be a poet. So I'm pretty much the fanciest person in my cubicle today!

(Also, one of the songs from Once got nominated for an Oscar, and I am happy about that, too! There better be an Oscar broadcast, I tell you what.)

At our reception, my dad asked Ian repeatedly if he was going to shove cake in my face. It turns out that my father has always found the cake-in-the-face trick funny. And here's proof! (There's actually a whole series of photos, including the impish look preceding the cake-in-the-face, and the actual cake-in-the-face-ing.)

Also, here is my dad dressed as a little Dutch girl. HA!

Bloggie Awards nominations are open until Thursday! I totally want to be on that panel. Like, hello, Dooce is so overrated these days.

Last year, my parents didn't know what I wanted for Christmas so they got me a tapestry with a cat on it. This year, having learned a very valuable lesson, I sent them a list of things I wanted. However, it was "too confusing" for them, and they had to "get creative." Lo and behold my Christmas gift of a tissue box holder shaped like a stack of books! (In the box was a two-dollar bill folded in thirds and held together with a gold bookmark shaped like a bear.)

If you visit my small Flickr set you can also see that Tiffany got a jar of mushrooms, and Ian got a jar of onions. Ian must have been psychic, because he decided to get them an insane purple and silver cat statuette. They were very confused by it. My mother said, "Oh, it probably goes 'moo' or something!" and my father talked about how he might use it as a paperweight or a door stop. (Here is my dad holding it.)

Christmas was delightful and the holiday felt, for once, really long. This is because Ian had to work on the 27th, so rather than staying in L.A. through the new year, we came home and I had like five days off! (My office was closed from the 22nd through today. Nice.) I organized stuff around the house, hung up my new chandelier (also as seen on Flickr) and we went to the movies and saw Juno (a little too look-at-me-I-am-so-clever and didn't live up to the massive hype) and Walk Hard (consistently funny and better than expected).

The highlights of being in L.A. (apart from the tissue box, of course) were playing Rock Band with my cousin and her boyfriend in their sweet gaming room (they have a giant HDTV and giant chairs with speakers in them that vibrate and everything), seeing movies with the gang (Atonement and Sweeney Todd, both of which I liked, especially Atonement), and just in general family togetherness. Also the drives back and forth were pretty nice, all things considered; on the way down we listened to the Once commentary; god, what a movie.

My January calendar is packed full of social engagements and such: two of my friends are moving away, one is having a birthday, and I'm supposed to go to Colorado to read my poems at an art gallery or something like that. Also the murder mystery weekend (which was next weekend) was cancelled, so we are trying to find something else to do with David and Ty to thank them for throwing us a terrific wedding. And the semester starts, which means I have to try and write a syllabus for a class I've never yet taught... FAST! So I guess the vacation was a nice recharge, and now I'm hitting the ground running.

Here are my resolutions from last year. Let's take a look and see how I did, shall we?

I had nine resolutions. Who does nine resolutions? Obviously I should have added a tenth, but whatever. Here were the nine resolutions (and how they worked out):

( Resolutions for 2007 )

As for this year's resolutions… I will try to make ten.

( Resolutions 2008 )

And I would be remiss in looking back at the year without mentioning Weetabix's year-end video which features footage from our booze cruise, from the wedding, and from several of the trips and shenanigans we had this year. So if you're interested, check it out!

Happy new year, everyone! I hope 2008 is fabulous for us all. Clink! Clink!

Well, this year's shindig was pretty much the best one ever. David and I agreed that we can't possibly top it; all we can try to do next year is make it just as good.

My shindig weekend actually kicked off on the drive down to L.A. with Nonk and Matt. They're hilarious and so much fun, and so of course we had a great time, despite a mishap with a temporarily lost wallet. I mention this because, at the Starbucks where the wallet was lost, we found a note on the wall. Stupidly we didn't take a picture of it, and by the time we went back, it was gone.

Well, there were actually two notes. One was along the lines of: "I hunt. I stalk. Woman, I see you. I dance." (And when we went back to that same Starbucks on the way home we saw, I am not kidding, men dressed in camo and HOLDING SHOTGUNS getting out of an SUV. That note was maybe more literal than we initially thought.) The second note started off with "Hitler once said...." and ended with "...love one another." I applaud this author for getting from Hitler to brotherly love in less than a paragraph. What a rhetorician! Since I don't have the text of the note, I will try and recreate it from memory. It was something like...

Hitler once said, wherever there is a German, there is Germany. And Schwarzenegger said the same thing about California. Therefore, whenever you see a fellow human being, there is humanity, and we should remember to love one another.

Hitler note author, I applaud you. Sort of.

After the drive was over.... well, it is impossible to encapsulate shindig this year. We had a ton of shindig virgins that are virginal no more (some less than others) including Weetabix, who came from Coldington, Melinda, Kevin, and Shawn. (Eric, had you been before? I want to say no.) Everyone was very sexy. It included a bitchin' casino with dealers hired for the night, a raspberry cosmo fountain that by the end of the evening was filled with Everclear and Powerade, several scandalous events, and a duet of Defying Gravity that defied explanation. In the gift exchange, I got a Linus blanket that I love very much. The dinner was delicious. Ian's Bacon Chocolate Fountain Concept was, improbably, a hit. The morning of shindig, David cooked us stuffed French toast that was definitely the best French toast ever. The Real World: Corona house, initially rented for our wedding, made a repeat appearance. In short, it was an awesome, awesome blowout party.

And then on the way home, we stopped at my dad's birthday party where I made fun of him for sending all my mail to "Mr. and Mrs. Ian Ianslastname." He said, "Well, I thought maybe you would use that on official things." Number one, that makes no sense. Number two, since when is a Christmas card from my father in any way an official document? Sigh. (Waiting for me at home was a Christmas card addressed to "Ian and Maureen Ian'slastname." This is just the beginning, isn't it.)

But anyway the best part was getting to see my family and my nephew, and especially my cousin, who missed our wedding because of Leonardo DiCaprio (boo) and has been in Morocco working on movies for seemingly ten thousand years. I actually don't think I've seen her since last Christmas! So that was awesome. (Oh, and Matt declared that my family was "wacky." See, I'm not making it up.)

I hope people had as much fun at shindig as I did; it hardly seems possible. As Hitler once said, here's to shindig 2008!

I've been at work all night and I am actually watching the Golden Globe nominations live. I can't actually process the nominations right now but I'm happy about a lot of them so far. (They haven't gotten to the main ones, but I heard songs from "Walk Hard" and "Enchanted," Casey Affleck and Tom Wilkinson, and... er... those are the only two categories I heard.

I am very tired. Not sure how I'm supposed to drive home after being up for 24 hours, but I guess I'll figure something out.

(Oh my god, it is too early to listen to Quentin Tarantino.)

The year is rapidly drawing to a close, and of course if I don't catch up now, I never will! So, here's the down and dirty version.

Thanksgiving was lovely, like two vacations in one! First Ian took me out for ice cream and to see Enchanted, which is so adorable and has a ton of Disney nerd inside jokes. I can't wait for the DVD to see the deleted song, which features Idina Menzel, who is in the movie but doesn't sing, what the hell. On Thanksgiving we went to La Wade's for a turkey dinner and had a fantastic time. I felt very thankful for my friends and not to be eating my mother's cooking. Love you, mom. Mean it.

On Friday Ian had to work and I had the day off, so I spent a lovely morning cleaning the house. (For some reason I can't clean unless I'm alone at home. Is that weird?) I bought new flowers to replace my old flowers. That's two weeks of flowers in a vase! (My theory of being a grownup is that the marker of grownupness is having fresh flowers in a vase. We got a stunning Kate Spade crystal vase for our wedding from E. and N. (thanks guys!) and I have successfully put flowers in it two weeks in a row. Right now it is tulips and they are blooming. Well, one is falling over, but still. They look great!) Then I went to pick up Brian from the airport, and that began my second vacation.

On Friday we went out to Luka's for dinner and beer. Then we went and saw Beowulf, which was quite frankly awful. We had fun making fun of it, but if we'd actually been able to play the Beowulf drinking game (which is to drink anytime he says he is Beowulf or someone else explains he is Beowulf) it would have been much more fun. Or we would have vomited on the theater floor, one or the other. Oh, we proposed names for the Beowulf porn spoof. Mine was Boobowulf (not very good, I admit) and Ian's was, appropriately enough, BeoMILF. If you've seen the movie, you know how genius that is.

On Saturday we went out for breakfast and then toured the Jelly Belly factory (FINALLY) and Brian made me eat a vomit jellybean ("If I'm eating one, you're eating one" which makes no sense since it was HIS IDEA TO EAT THEM) and it was disgusting and we spit them out simultaneously. Then we went into San Francisco to go drinking at the Belgian beer bar and out for tapas with friends, including Shawn who was in town, yay! I think that night we stayed up watching Spaceballs and Hannah Montana. Dude, that show is weird. I thought it was this hip show but everything--the sets and fashions and everything--look so neon and cheesy and 80s. Actually, it looks like Full House. The episode we saw even seemed to be about Hannah Montana and her friend Kimmie Gibbler.

On Sunday we went to the cemetery to see the Jonestown mass grave and take a highly inappropriate picture of Brian wearing his Kool-Aid shirt. I know you won't believe me if I then tell you that we really did pay our respects. I know we were both affected by the nearby grave dedicated by a man who lost his wife, his sister, and his seven children at Jonestown. (We looked him up later and saw that he lost 17 other family members as well.) I think he was in the documentary Life and Death of People's Temple (which is so amazing but do not watch it before you go to sleep; it will haunt you). After that contemplative moment, we went out for Zachary's pizza and then it was time for Brian to go to the airport. Perfect visit!

I went to L.A. this weekend to see Elijah, who is doing much better and is as adorable as ever. I drove down on Saturday and back up on Sunday and crashed on my sister's couch. All I brought was my laundry. It was quite crazy. But the drive was nice and went by fast; I got The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency on Audible, and it was great. I'm not done with it yet; I listened to it some more on my commute today.

Anyway, while I was there I also stopped off to stalk The Office set, which is really close to my parents' house. I nerdily took photos of things like the benches where the warehouse guys sat to make fun of Michael's package, and Bob Vance's parking spot, and the parking lot where, sadly, no Sebring or P.T. Cruiser or Yaris was parked. Anyway, now I am trying to figure out which window is Michael's office and which one is the conference room... anyway, I am a dork. But I didn't get to go to the convention, so this was the next best thing.

Well, the transfusion (infusion?) procedure went on for something like 16 hours or so, but last I heard, Elijah was perked up and doing better. They're keeping him overnight to monitor how he does when he's not being transfused (infused). Still no word for sure on whether this is Kawasaki's or something else. But he's doing better than he was, at any rate.

I thought I might make a little PSA to ask you (if you're able) to consider donating some of those gamma globin thingies. As you may know, I am terrified of needles, and the one time I tried to donate it ended badly, but I have confirmed that I can take a little valium and for Elijah's sake and so I'm not a big hypocrite, I will try again. So I will be putting my money where my mouth is and donating this weekend.

Just look at his sweet little face. That's who you might be helping by handing over your gamma globulins.

Anyway, even if you don't have any blood to spare, thanks for the good thoughts! I'll definitely keep you posted.