RAWR!

Regretfully Yours

As I begin to stare 30 in the face, I admit that, in order to be the best version of myself, I should be asleep at 1:30 am. I'm often not, though, and often not for any good reason. I'm rarely reading some magnificent novel, or having a top-15% sexual experience, or dancing til delirious. No, I'm much more likely to be eating cheap olives and half-watching some dreck on TBS (which is slightly better than drinking cheap gin and fully-watching some dreck on Oxygen, I guess). Last night, after a good long weep induced by damn Judi Dench, I thought it'd be nice to blog for a bit. Oi. Did anyone read that post before I woke up this morning and deleted it in dismay? I hope not.

Red Light Bonus!

Thanks to my sister Rebecca, I'm now addicted to Cash Cab:

Greaser

It wasn’t a morning of triumph for your Ms. Parilac. I slept until 10:30 or so, which isn’t irregular if I have the day off. But then I just sat around for a couple of lame hours, watching Mother, May I Sleep With Danger?, eating multiple bagels with multiple spreads, and complimenting my cats on their cuteness/adorableness/smoochiness.

I tried to kick ass into a higher gear by at least getting out of the house. I wandered to my closest area of commerce—the carbuncle of Chicago that is “UIC Village“—snuck some soda into a Caribou and did payday chores online. Moving to a sofa a few blocks away from my own didn’t make me feel very accomplished, but it was pleasant. I kind of liked how everyone in the place could have been doing what they were doing—drinking an iced latte, chatting with a friend, highlighting a textbook—outside on such a gorgeous day but didn’t care. I’m not one to let nice weather strong-arm me into enjoying it. Hmph to blue skies!

So there I was, thinking I was surrounded by like-minded folks, when I noticed the guy next to me was looking at a website featuring photographs of mice inside vaginas. So much for fellowship. I really needed to change the course of my day. I called up Sherri, to see if she wanted to hang out. She did, and could, and didn’t mind that I’d left the house wearing an inside-out shirt and pants.

Next time on Rawr: something along the lines of my not being lame.

Two Unrelated Stories

...totally mangled by the memory of your faithful blogstress....

Scary Story From My Dad
So he lives out in the country, where there are SNAKES. That's a scary story by itself, right? But here's another one...there were these two snakes in his fire pit. Which is only a few yards away from the house, to which I say: TIME TO MOVE. There was, like, this married snake couple, and they wouldn't leave the pit, but after awhile Dad decided to start a fire in the pit to persuade them to find new digs. Which worked on one snake but not the other! I'm going to posit that the stay-put snake was pregnant, because that makes this a better story.

Anyway, Dad had to use a shovel to scoop the half-burned, still slithery snake out of the pit. He tried to throw it into a nearby meadow (my favorite word--did you know that?), but he threw too hard and the snake got caught in a tree. And its burning skin fused it to a branch! So the snake corpse was there all summer, eventually rotting down into a skeleton, entangled in the tree.

You've-Gotta-Be-Kidding Story From Heather
A woman called the children's department, to tell us that she'd forgotten to give her child his library card that morning. Not a big deal, Heather assured her. But her child was visiting with his class today and wouldn't be able to check out books like the other children! No, Heather assured her--he could just go up to the circulation desk with his teacher. But that would be humiliating for him, to do something different from his classmates! Uh...no, Heather assured her, it would be okay.

Couldn't the woman just fax a copy of both sides of the card to the library, and then Heather could cut them out and glue the front and back together and then surreptitiously slip it to the kid so that he could pretend that it was a real card without his peers knowing what had happened? No, Heather assured her, because that would make me as crazy as you. (Heather might have just thought this last part to herself.)

But I've Never Called Him A Dumb Blonde!

Oh, I've been having way too much fun with the new People Magazine covers archive. My favorite so far?

Scatter

Not many would describe the weather in Oak Park right now as beautiful, but it happens to be my favorite kind. Overcast but still bright, cool enough for the lightest of jackets, and windless. Still, I couldn't tarry outdoors during my lunch break--I need to blog! Work's been busy enough for the last couple of weeks that I often skipped my mid-day hour off, meaning no bloggy time. But the next 30 minutes, at least, are just you and me, Rawr.

The reason I've been so slogged at work: I'm coordinating our summer reading program. I got the website up today if you wanna see how cute a bug theme can be, when illustrated by Harry Bliss and pictures of some of our regulars.

Hmm. I got distracted eating a ham sandwich. Now I only have 12 minutes to blog. It might be time to skip paragraphs and segues.

Something I learned this morning: you can't put 40 nickel in a CTA machine. At least, not at once. They only let you put in 20 coins at a time, for some infuriatingly obscure reason. Then you have to buy the card with your $1 in nickels on it, put it in again, and add-value another 20 nickel. You also have to complain loudly in order for a CTA worker to even half-ass explain this to you. (Hey, that turned out to be a paragaph after all.)

Something that amazed me this morning involved none other than Laura Dern.

I wish I had more earrings. Dangly ones. And cheekbones against which to display them. That is all.

Ooo, this just in! Meghan's Matt just coded something PHENOMENALLY cool: the TWOP One Pager.