Running Update: Week Two

I think the status of my running experiment is best summed up in this conversation with H-Town's brother, runner extraordinaire:

E-Town: how's the running?

Me: I want to stab everything.
btw, I learned this: Do not run on the same day you have burlesque class. FYI

E-Town: haha, ok

Me: my legs are like spaghetti today

E-Town: thin and tasty?

Me: limp and wrapped around a fork


I seriously look like I have just now discovered my knees and I'm still getting used to them. I was confused about why my body was rebelling against this so much - the running part I understand, but I was a dancer for 14 years and I felt like I should be holding up better in the face of pliés and hip circles. Then it dawned on me that the last time I did a plié I was about 17. My body already knew that, and clearly is telling me "No fucking way, lady. You are every day of 33 years old, so stop trying to bend your knees sideways." As with most advice I am given, I've chosen to ignore this, and the 26 seconds of choreography we learned last night has been run in my office today more than once, though I'm not sure if it's because I want to get everything down perfect before the next class or because I like to touch my butt.

Training Day (Or, I Must Be Fucking Crazy)

You remember that movie Training Day with Denzel Washington, where he's a crooked narcotics officer training Ethan Hawk and all kinds of horrible shit happens? Yeah well my first training day for this 5K I'm running was a lot like that, except with less forcing people to smoke PCP and no one got shot. Though, given the way my legs feel right now, if I were a horse and not a person I would have been taken out back and shot this morning. It's possible I'm being a little over dramatic. It's also possible that I'm not, and that running really does suck as much as I'm telling you it does.

I'm using the highly touted Couch to 5K program, which a number of my friends have done and insist that it works and that they love to run now. I got up yesterday at the ass crack of dawn, slightly wary but also fairly excited. I was going to run! Like those people that I see running! That was going to be me! Day one of the program starts you off slowly: 5 minutes of brisk walking followed by alternating 60 seconds of running with 90 seconds of walking for 8 reps, totaling 20 minutes. This seemed like a no brainer. I can run for 60 seconds at a stretch, right? I'm in excellent shape overall - I lift weights and I shadow box. Piece of cake.

After the first 60 seconds of running I was ready to kill myself. What was I thinking with this whole running bullshit? Am I some kind of idiot? I spent the 90 seconds of my break sifting through my iPod until I found The Prodigy's Smack My Bitch Up and put it on repeat. It was the only song I had that was angry enough to match my complete hatred of this incredibly stupid form of exercise.

By the time I had finished I'd calmed down a bit, mainly because I knew I was going to get to spend the rest of the day telling people how bad it was and have them pat me on the back and tell me I am awesome sauce. And I did - I bitched and complained about it the entire day to everyone, including Jon and Scott of the incredibly awesome podcast Total Talk Nonsense while I was at their worldwide headquarters recording episode 228 as an in studio guest and being all famous 'n shit. In reality I felt pretty good. I had made it through the whole first workout without giving up, I was energized, confident, proud of myself. I could picture in my mind running the whole 3.1 miles while dodging zombies left and right. I set my alarm for 5 a.m. this morning so I could get up and run the same thing again.

When the alarm went off I was ready. I fucking OWNED that horrible workout yesterday and today would be even easier because I'd already done it! I got out of bed and...

HOLY MOTHERFUCKING CRAP ON A CRACKER. Mentally, I was totes prepared to go out and run. Physically, however, my legs were saying, "Like fuck you are, stupid ass. We're not falling for that shit again. Go away and come back tomorrow." The pain, which originally seemed to be mostly confined to my shins, was tremendous. Then I sat down on the edge of the bed and realized the pain in my upper thighs was even worse than the pain in my shins. Then I stood up again to go wash my face and to my utter astonishment noticed that my ass was actually on fire. Really? My ASS hurts from this? Because, as I said before, I lift weights frequently and there's squatting down and lunging types of things I do that work those muscles and I KNOW that my ass is in shape and what the fuck? H-town's brother, who started out on the same couch to 5K program and now can run like the wind, told me that the reason my ass hurts is because running works the muscles in a different way than weight lifting does. By "different way" I assume he means "the way of the devil". I was obviously not running anywhere today. As a matter of fact, the little bit of walking I did between the train and the places I needed to go saw me stumbling around downtown Chicago like Lurch and frightening all the children and several adults.

If it wasn't for the fact that I love H-town and really want to do something cool with her and also the part about the zombies I would just give up this very minute. I am right now sat on my couch and plotting out my plans for the evening based around doing the bare minimum of moving possible. Because my legs...oh lord, my legs. The Run For Your Lives zombie 5K is October 22nd. Beginning October 23rd I am NEVER RUNNING AGAIN.

I Do, However, Love The Game "Arguments With Friends"

Just an FYI: Blogger spell check corrected four words I had misspelled in this conversation alone

Fish: you should get words with friends
its basically scrabble
but you can lose to me

me: you're the hundredth person to say that and i will tell you what i told everyone else - i can't play any scrabble based games because i can't fucking spell

Fish: see
but this one
tells you when it's not a word
and it uses the scrabble dictionary
but if you try and make up a word
it is like "go fuck yourself"

me: but if i type a word that i know is a word and i just have it spelled wrong will it suggest "did you mean..."? like a normal online dictionary does?

Fish: no mam

me: yeah, not playing that

Fish: pussy

me: you are also forgetting that i am entirely antisocial and don't want to play much of anything with my friends
you'd be like "let's play a game!" and i'd be like "yes, let us both play a game...separately"

Fish: right
and you can
it's not real time
its almost like you are playing over email
you play a word
and then the other person plays a word when they have their ipad and 10 minutes to burn
i am playing one person right now who hasn't played a word in 10 days

me: oh good, because that's how long it would take me to figure out how to spell a word

Fish: Drama queen is actually 2 words

me: so is suck it

You May Say To Yourself, "My God, What Have I done?"

I wasn't kidding about that sentence at the end of the last post. As of yesterday, H-Town and I are officially signed up to run a 5K together in Baltimore in October. We are neither of us runners. H-Town is in fact quite fond of saying she would never run unless she was being chased. Someone evil obviously overheard that, because this is no ordinary 5K race - it is a 5K race with an obstacle course built into it and you do all these things while being chased by zombies.

I have no idea what possessed me to think I should do this, really. It's like I saw the phrase "chased by zombies" and laughed so hard at the very idea that I didn't even notice I was signing myself up to run three GIANT MILES, because if I had noticed, I'd have been like "What the fuck is this bit about the running? Uh-uh. FUCK. THAT." and, you know, not done that. You guys, I HATE running. I really, really hate it. I am that girl in the morning that pisses you off walking idly up the stairs to the train platform when you are late for work and the train is pulling up right now and oh my god, bitch, can't you hear the train is coming? GET OUT OF MY WAY. Dude. No. There is no way I am running up the stairs to catch this train because guess what? It is rush hour and there will be another train in, like, five minutes, so chill out because I am NOT running.

So yeah, running, not for me, and yet I'm going to have to run pretty much constantly for the next two months or so if I have any hope of surviving the zombie apocalypse that I have somehow managed to talk myself into. Training for a 5K should turn out to be pretty entertaining to you, the ones who are smart enough to just sit there and watch me get chased by zombies instead of doing it yourself. I'll keep you posted. Now then, where IS that large automobile?

I'm With The Band (And Other Things Currently Scaring The Shit Out Of Me Right Now)

Whenever someone comes along and rips my heart out of my chest, then stomps it into mush, scoops what's left into a glass jar and puts the jar on shelf in a display case to keep as a trophy, I always react in the same way - by immediately engaging in a series of terrifyingly out of character behaviors that outwardly appear to be exciting new ventures but are really half-assed attempts at self-destruction. If I ever tell you I have taken up skydiving as a hobby, have decided to study entomology, or wish I had more opportunities for public speaking, you should probably assume I am actually just very sad and suggest moping about the house in sweatpants eating ice cream out of the carton as a safer alternative.

In news that may or may not be related to the preceding paragraph, I have recently joined a band and taken up burlesque dancing.

I signed up for burlesque classes in what can only be described as a fit of rage - reading through an awful e-mail (!) for the hundredth time, I suddenly went all Right Said Fred, decided I was too sexy for your party, and googled "burlesque lessons chicago" which led me to the fucking brilliant Studio L'Amour and the associated Everleigh Social Club, where after about 15 minutes into my first class, I decided I was going to become a Starlet as soon as possible. Then I actually saw the Starlets perform and thought "Holy shit, I will never be that good". Then I went home and decided I damn well will be that good even if it kills me because there really is no way I'm disco dancing, so I'm just going to have to shake my little tush on the catwalk. Now, I know there are a few people out there who don't know me as well as they think they do, and are wondering why I think taking my clothes off in front of strangers is out of character. I assure you that none of these people have ever seen me naked, and anyone who has knows that this is, in fact, very out of character for me. I'm just saying to watch out, I don't want you to trip over the irony. The point is, I'm doing that.

Almost immediately after signing up for the burly class, I got a message from my dear friend TTN Jon inviting me to audition for a band he was playing in called the Newburys. The singer they had sort of quit unexpectedly, and with a gig coming up they needed someone to fill in pretty quickly. I went to the audition and they liked me, so I started very quickly learning songs since all told we had precisely four rehearsals (including the audition) before the gig. So here's the thing - as much as I like to pretend to be all punk rock n' that, I've really only been to rock shows as a spectator. I've never actually been in a band before. Ever. Sure, I've been on stage singing loads of times, but classical music is an entirely different experience, one that seems custom made for me since having a personality is largely frowned upon. Fronting a rock band, however, almost invariably means talking to strangers, which falls squarely into the bucket of Things Amber Doesn't Do. Another problem - the friends who were coming to see us have all been in rock bands before and know what they are doing and I quickly developed a massive complex about sucking in front of them. I was also wholly convinced I was going to forget all the words, which terrified me until my amazing roommate pointed out that the songs were originals and no one in the crowd actually knew the words, so if I forgot them I could make something up and no one would know the difference.

I spent all day Saturday freaking the fuck out. I would frantically go over songs for an hour, then become worried I was over-preparing and start worrying about something else. Such as what to wear - I walked to Taboo Tabou and bought a corset because I obviously did not own one single thing I could possibly front a rock band in, which I then didn't wear because it seemed like I was trying too hard. Then I got worried I didn't know the words and went back to frantically going over songs. This cycle repeated itself until I finally just said "fuck it" and got in a cab before I could chicken out of the whole thing. This was my best move, really - I had a posse of supportive friends around me who kept me from disintegrating, plus the door guy who gave me some advice on my way in and lifted me off the ground in a giant bear hug on my way out.

I did ok, mostly. I remembered all the words, stayed on pitch and faced out at the audience, where Scott was taking millions of photos for me with my camera and holding my purse (he's a great purse holder, you can tell he's married) and Phil was standing down front giving me a thumbs up and mouthing encouraging things every time I looked at him (which was a lot). What I didn't do was sing particularly loud, move around very much or talk to the crowd really at all. The volume thing was mostly mechanical - many of the songs were at the far end of my range, and all the air in my lungs was being used up to hit the pitch correctly. The lack of movement was less stage fright and more a function of performing really depressing songs. Even with a catchy melody and an upbeat tempo, dancing around to a song with lyrics about spousal abuse seemed fairly inappropriate. Not talking to the crowd? Ok, that was all on me, but for real I HAVE NEVER DONE THIS BEFORE so, you know, lay off me. We did well enough that the crazy guy with biking gloves on dancing in front started screaming for ONE MORE! which was really the only time I managed to speak to the crowd. "Oh thanks, but we can't. Seriously. We genuinely do not know any more songs. Really." This was not a lie. (Later crazy guy would say I was good and ask me to "touch" him. I put my hand on his shoulder and he thanked me and left.)

The one thing I hadn't thought to prepare for was that after our set, people I didn't know would come up and talk to me. I really have no idea why I didn't think of that, and it wound up being by far the most frightening part of the whole experience because HOLY SHIT PEOPLE ARE TALKING TO ME. Overall, though, I didn't die, which was where I had set the bar so I win.

Next up on the tour of Shit I Shouldn't Be Doing: I'm going to Baltimore to run a 5K while being chased by zombies. FYI - I don't run. Ever.

Battle Of The Florae

MrBalls*: my plant is dusty
i'm not sure how to dust it without cleaning every leaf

me: as far as i know that is the only way to clean a plant

MrBalls: it's got a lot of leaves though

me: ok new plan, get very drunk, then wash the plant

MrBalls: good plan, I was hoping to meet someone tonight but she is ill
maybe i'll just clean my plant

me: lol yes, that is a good substitute for a girl. plant.

MrBalls: hmm not sure about that, plants don't do the same things

me: oh right. sorry i was thinking of boys and vegetables


*MrBalls is a relatively new friend who has not appeared on Bizzybiz before. I have no idea what his real nickname is or if he even has one, and making one up based on things I know about him would all sound geeky (because most would have the word geek in them). He's asleep right now (I assume, or possibly drunk cleaning a plant) so I can't ask him about his nickname either. MrBalls comes from a fucking brilliant episode of Aqua Teen Hunger Force. I have absolutely no idea why that popped into my head but suffice it to say it is in no way a reflection on my dear friend or his balls and in fact it does not remind me of him in any way whatsoever. I probably should have gone with something about ice cream (he likes it).

It's Shark Week Again, Y'all

via icanhascheezburger.com

Resolution (I Think)

I don't want to count my chickens here or anything, but I think I may have solved my mail delivery problem by outsmarting the post office. Also, I don't actually have any chickens, so can't do a lot of counting of them.

I have received actual mail, not junk mail, real mail addressed to me, at my home, for three of the last four days. Some of it came from people or organizations who recently had things they tried to mail me get sent back. I am cautiously optimistic that this will continue.

So how did I solve the problem? Because contacting the local post office on the internets did not work. Contacting the national post office online didn't work either. Phone calls to customer service, the local post office and the main Chicago branch were wholly ineffective. Complaining about the total lack of assistance when they sent me a survey about my recent USPS.com experience garnered no results whatsoever. I was about to contact the Problem Solvers when I decided to try one more time in a last ditch effort before bringing in the big guns. Because the thing is, the US Postal Service is a huge bureaucracy, right? My telling them, again and again and AGAIN AND AGAIN that I hadn't moved did absolutely nothing to get my mail started because you can tell people they're doing it wrong until you're blue in the face, but unless you figure out a way to get inside the system, nothing is going to change. Well, I figured out a way: I used their online change of address feature and I changed my address from my apartment to...my apartment. That's right, I changed my address from the one where I live to the exact same thing and lo and behold, a few days later I got a confirmation letter with a packet of "Welcome to the neighborhood" coupons from USPS, and shortly thereafter started opening my mailbox and finding actual mail inside it. I've beat them at their own game. Bravo, USPS, you are a worthy opponent, but I watch a lot of Star Trek and I am a master at using logic to defeat the illogical.

SOON! Well, Not Really That Soon, But Still.

My cousin(ish) Kelly, who is super awesome and loves me so much, had all these airline credits that she needed to use up before they expired. So guess what she did. Can you guess? She booked a trip to Chicago to come see me.

FOR MY BIRTHDAY.

Which is not only THE MOST EPIC BIRTHDAY PRESENT EVER but also has given me a perfect excuse to talk about my mid January birthday in late July. You guys. This might be the best thing that has ever happened to me.

The planning, of course, began immediately. My party is officially called "Amber's Super Ultra Fantabulous Birthtacular Celebration Extravaganza: Now With MORE KELLY!" and features EPIC CAKE (to be announced), party hats for everyone!, possibly some partial nudity and some sort of THINGS! THINGS I tell you! It is not to be missed. Do so at your own peril, because later when everyone is like "Wasn't Amber's Super Ultra Fantabulous Birthtacular Extravaganza with More Kelly the best birthday party that has ever been held at any time on this globe?" you will have to be like "I don't know, I wasn't there" and then everyone will be like "Whoa, way to kill the mood there, Debbie Downer" and then there will be an awkward silence and it will be all your fault and they will think twice about offing you any leftover epic cake. So, you know, probably you should pencil it in.

I've Got Your Dime Right Here

This is not a post about my cat. Having said that, my evil cat is a tortoiseshell, which if you know anything about torties goes a long way toward explaining why she is so evil. When she sits back on her haunches, her particular brindle pattern makes it look like she's wearing a pair of light brown trousers. This is what I was looking at during dinner this evening that triggered me to start singing to her "I love furry pants, so come on and sit back and lick your paws" to the tune of "I Love Rock and Roll". And that in turn caused me to realize why that song has always bothered me.

I turned to the bartender, who is somewhat older than I am, and asked "Hey, was there a time you can remember when songs played on the jukebox cost a dime? Because I only ever remember them being a quarter. So, like, did she say 'dime' in that song because they used to cost a dime or because 'quarter' had too many syllables?"

The bartender is pretty used to my bizarre conversational tangents by now and has learned it's better to just play along. "They've always been a quarter in my lifetime," he replied kindly while thinking in his head Oh Jesus, not again.


"That's what I thought. We need someone older that can be like 'Hey, back in the 50's a song on the jukebox cost a nickel!' or whatever, but I mean, if it's a right-number-of-syllables issue then 'nickel' doesn't work either. But that still wouldn't make sense because that song is from the 80's and you just said in the 80's songs were a quarter. She wouldn't remember songs costing a dime. So what the hell? That's false advertising! It costs TWO AND A HALF TIMES as much to love rock and roll as what she's telling people!"

The bartender chewed his steak thoughtfully for a moment to give me time to stew and then sagely changed the subject back to the cat in an effort to stop my brain from derailing entirely. It worked for about 10 minutes and then we had this exchange: "She was doing that thing today where she just keeps coming in the room to wake me up and then when she knows I'm awake she walks out of the room again."

"She's so shitty when she's mad."

"And then she went and got one of her bottle caps to bring it in my room and bat it around so I couldn't go back to sleep."

"See, the way it should work is, songs should cost different amounts based on their quality. Like, if you want to play a disco song on the jukebox that should cost a dollar and REAL songs should be a quarter. Or a dime! There should be a premium applied for subjecting the people around you to shitty music is my point."

There was a long pause while I waited for him to agree with my obviously brilliant plan, but all he said was "Wow, you're still on that. Oh well, I tried."

Amberance: TTN Mega-Guest

I got a Facebook message over the weekend from Max, host of the podcast Countless Screaming Argonauts and friend of my ONE AND ONLY favorite podcast on the whole earth, Total Talk Nonsense. Max writes that he wants to be my Facebook friend because he feels like he knows me. In fact, several people who are TTN listeners have expressed new feelings of familiarity toward me, which I think can be traced back to a couple of events: my hour long appearance on TTN episode 2T4 and my subsequent many hours long appearance on episode 2T5, which for those keeping score at home is the VERY NEXT EPISODE. Yes, for two weeks in a row I was a phone in guest on the greatest podcast going and those conversations appear to have been well received by all (bar one). This can only mean one thing - it is all downhill from here. I have achieved all that I have set out to achieve. Short of someday being an actual in studio, Glenlivet or Jameson or Red Stag drinking live guest, there is nothing else I can think of that would top this moment. If you think of anything, please let me know, because I definitely want to try that something. But I'm not holding my breath.

CHECK ME OUT!

Episode 2T4 (or 224 for those unfamiliar with Scott's inability to speak clearly when drunk) where we discuss two major recent events in my life, neither of which have as yet been detailed here on Bizzybiz, the bartender's brush with death and a challenging game of Shit or Shinola that only ended because avocados are fucking gross. I also do a brief impression of Scott.

Episode 2T5 where I am on for basically the entire show except for the news portion. I would get carpal tunnel listing everything we discussed here, but a random sample of topics we touched on include a vitriolic reaction to my conversation on the previous episode by a person who hadn't actually listened to it, Scott's questionable romantic advice, a discussion of a movie I haven't actually seen, disturbing search terms that have led people to Bizzybiz, tet-anus, the gorgeous but reticent Gene Marteen and what precisely constitutes an "average" American house.

By the time you all listen to both episodes you'll know almost everything worth knowing about me other than what I look like naked and how many grapes I can fit in mouth at the same time. It occurs to me maybe this is a bad idea, as one could argue there would be no reason for anyone to read Bizzybiz again, but I would counter that I am certain to have new terrifying encounters with spiders, new bruises from running into things I know are there and new misadventures that only I could manage to get myself into. There is always more stupidity I can manufacture and you can get that right here.

Learning Curve

My company moved our offices last week, which has been quite educational as far as getting to know my co-workers and finding out which of them are crazy and which are not, something I will not go into here, less out of privacy issues than out of my not wanting to relive the experience because, seriously, oh my god.

On the whole this has been good. I now have an office of my very own with an actual door and a window and a desk made out of wood. Also I have a weird diagonal beam in the back of my office that half covers the windows and truncates the usable space. Obviously I requested this particular office because I thought it was awesome, not to mention the fact that it is also the last one on the far end of the space, meaning that anyone coming this way is doing so on purpose to see me rather than walking by on their way to somewhere else, thus retaining my status of having the most private space of anyone here, which is good because I take naps under my desk Costanza style on a semi-regular basis (I have a pillow and everything). It is also gloriously RIGHT NEXT TO BROWNSFAN'S OFFICE. On moving in, I promptly tacked up a paper ceiling cat to watch me calculate because the CEO thinks it's really stupid. On the other side of BrownsFan is the CEO's office, in which he has laid out his furniture in a way that causes there to be a long alleyway of empty space to one side of his desk that everyone has had a suggestion as far as how to fill. Bowling alley was an idea. I went pinball machine after learning that he has a Star Trek one IN HIS HOME which he should obviously bring here so that I can play it. He has boringly gone with his own idea: tree. I was disappointed until he told me I could decorate it for Christmas at which point I started jumping up and down and squealing. I WILL DECORATE THE CRAP OUT OF THAT TREE FOR CHRISTMAS. WATCH ME.

Our new offices are located in the office tower portion of a train station, which I explored last week in an attempt to educate myself about my new surroundings. Here's what I've learned:

• There are no less than three Hudson News stores in this one train station (that I've found so far), two of which are directly across from one another. I bought a 20 oz. Coke Zero and a small bag of Chex Mix in there for over $7. It would have cost me less than $3 if I'd walked a few more feet to the CVS. I learned not to shop at Hudson News.
• There is also an Auntie Anne's Pretzels in here. Dangerous this may become. I am trying to forget that I know that.
• The trek to and from the office level floors involves a ride on the escalator. It is a huge pet peeve of mine when people get on an escalator and then just stand there, particularly when it's going down. People: The escalator is NOT A RIDE. Please either walk your lazy ass down the magical moving staircase or move the fuck over so I don't have to kill you.
• There is one major drawback to working in a commuter train station, which I discovered almost immediately: at quittin' time, absolutely everyone in the world is trying to get into the place you are trying to leave. And since it's the end of the day and everybody just wants to go home, they will mow you the hell down if you get in their way. Since I am leaving the train station I am, by definition, in their way, and getting home for me is now similar to a very frustrated salmon getting pelted with massive rocks on its way to spawn, except at the end I don't get to spawn. This strikes me as a very cruel joke. 

Remember when I said I wasn't going to talk about my co-workers at the beginning? I lied. Back in our old space, all of the offices had glass walls and the rest of the space was a sort of open architecture dealy-o, meaning everyone was pretty much all up in each other's business because you could hear and see everything that was happening. If you wanted to have a private conversation or scratch your ass this was not a good thing, but if you wanted to get someone's attention three desks away you could just call to them whatever it is you wanted. Apparently after 20 some odd years, this practice is a hard one for a few people to break. Despite the fact that we have these amazing walls now and that the layout is not at all designed for line of site to anyone else in the place, there are a few people who continue to yell into the hallway when they want to talk to someone. This is usually met with a yelled back "What?" which in turn leads to louder hallway screaming. BrownsFan and I have been supporting one another in our attempts not to strangle the others, who have not yet noticed, despite our reminders, that we have these amazing inventions called "telephones" and that proper usage of said "phones" would allow one to speak in a regular tone of voice whilst still being heard by the person five rooms away one would like to speak to without disrupting everyone else by screaming at the top of one's lungs. The technology is amazing, it's way beyond our time.

More on this later, and photos when I remember to take some. Currently it is time for my desk nap.

I Will Make Every Conversation About Sex Eventually. Every One.

The cake master's g-mail chat status read "ANTM is still on?" I had no idea what that meant so I googled it. Mistake.

me: Ok, I had to actually go look up what ANTM is, and now I'm upset that I did that
The cake master: hahaha
it's SO BAD

me: it's to the point where I don't even want to watch tv anymore because even if i'm watching something good there's going to be a commercial for something that flat out sucks

The cake master: haha
very true

me: also the history channel should not be allowed to be called the history channel any more

The cake master: why not?
because of the serious lack of history being broadcast on it?

me: who the hell's idea was it to make a reality show about logging? for reals. wtf?

The cake master: oh i know, it's ridiculous

me: also, discovery channel ghost hunters needs to be called "old houses make noises, get over it"

The cake master: omfg
HAHAHA
indeed
and BBC America needs to be called, "Hey, we have a few British shows"

me: OMG RIGHT? I love TNG n' everything but THAT WAS AN AMERICAN SHOW OH MY GOD STOP

The cake master: I actually emailed them about that once
like, BBC has so many good shows, can't we get a few more instead of TNG?
and they responded it's a popular show and they get good ratings on it

me: "it stars a british guy, what the eff do you want from us?"

The cake master: hahaha
right, now they have Battlestar Galactica
which I love, but COME ON
of course, it stars a british guy too, so I guess I shouldn't complain
a British guy with an American accent

me: There's already a Sci Fi channel. It's called SyFy

The cake master: and it used to show Battlestar Galactica!!

me: i really need to bang patrick stewart. fyi

The cake master: haha nice

me: like, a lot

My Opinion, And I Do Have One

The Post Office is fucking with me, and I'm starting to feel a little bit stabby about it.

This started way the hell back in May, while the bartender was in the hospital. I didn't even really notice it at first - truth is I don't get all that much mail, what with our modern, instant methods of communication, and it's not unusual to go a few days without seeing anything in the mailbox. But I had ordered a couple of t-shirts and realized that it had been over a week and they hadn't shown up, and that it also seemed to be taking an extraordinarily long time for my Gilmore Girls Season 2 DVDs that I purchased from Amazon to arrive (fuck you, that show is awesome). And just as it was dawning on me that maybe there was a problem, I got phone calls from the place where I rent a storage locker to house all nine of my Christmas trees when it's not the season of Christmas trees and from my insurance company, both of whom snippily informed me that they'd sent me mail that had been returned with no forwarding address and, you know, I really should have informed them of the fact that I was moving ahead of time. Except, um, I haven't moved. In, like, four years. The phone calls came when I was in England, so there wasn't a whole lot I could do at the time.

The nearest I can figure out, the screw up has something to do with my neighbor moving out. This would make some sense - my now former neighbor, while nice enough, is a colossal fucking idiot. Shortly after he first moved in I got notices from both the gas and the electric companies of the cancellation of my accounts and the final bills. As I had not cancelled any accounts I called them up and was told my accounts had been cancelled because I had moved and someone else was living there. I explained that I had NOT moved, someone else most certainly the fuck was not living there and fix it now. Turns out the guy who had moved in across the hall didn't actually know his address and was giving all the utility companies mine. Everything got straightened out, he was all "dude, my bad" and life went on as normal. Except, it seems, that he never did actually learn his address, and when he moved out and changed his address with USPS he again gave them mine. And in the infinite wisdom of the Post Office, they assumed that meant that I had moved, so despite the fact that I had filled out no change of address card they were sending all my mail back from whence it came, with a note saying I had left no forwarding address, which indeed I hadn't, BECAUSE I HAD NOT FUCKING MOVED.

Upon my return, I got in touch with them, explained that I had gotten no mail for an entire month and asked that they please stop doing whatever it was they were doing and go ahead and actually deliver my mail. In the meantime, I got in touch with every single vendor I had purchase something from that had not arrived, and begged them to resend the packages to my office where I seem to have more success with actually receiving mail.

I got a phone call from the post office apologizing and saying the problem had been fixed and for a while it seemed that it had. I got a trickle of things in, occasionally, covered in weird rerouting stickers, and I assumed all was back to normal. Which turned out to be a poor assumption. Again, I started getting a mess of phone calls and e-mails from friends who'd tried sending me things, my employer who'd tried to mail my pay stub, the insurance company who'd sent my cards again only to have them returned a second time - was I sure I hadn't moved? Did I actually know my own address? I fired off a message to them on their website, with the former case number, the name of the person who said it had been fixed, a description of how I knew it had not AT ALL been fixed, and a plea to please ACTUALLY FIX IT. At the bottom where it says "How should we contact you?" I checked off "e-mail" and sent the thing off with the understanding that I would be e-mailed an update within three business days.

I received no such e-mail. Instead I received a voicemail from a man at the post office asking me to call back to "discuss" the issue with a number. Which I called. FOUR TIMES. Four times I called the number he left, and four times it rang and rang and rang for 10 minutes and was followed by a shrill beepy sound and a click. Two days later, the same man called me AGAIN, left the SAME number, which I called again TWO MORE TIMES to the same effect, i.e. NONE. I gave up and resigned myself with having to accept that I might never have home mail service again.

And then, yesterday, I finally get an e-mail from USPS. Does it tell me they've looked into and resolved my issue? Do they ask me for more information on the problem, like dates and such forth? Does it include a working phone number that either gets answered or goes to voicemail? No. It reads thusly:

"The United States Postal Service® (USPS®) would like to thank you for your recent E-mail. Your opinions are very important to the USPS® as we continually monitor and improve customer service.

You can provide feedback on your E-mail experience by completing a brief 5 minute survey. To participate in the survey, click on the Web address below. For your convenience, the survey is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week through July 7, 2011, from any computer with Internet access."

Oh really, post office, you want my opinion do you? WELL HERE IT IS. My opinion is that your entire organization should get stabbed in the eye. Right in the eye, with a blunt pencil. My opinion is that this is a vast conspiracy to try and trick me into paying for a PO Box by pretending to be incompetent at delivering mail to my home. My opinion is that you should actually take some sort of action to resolve the problem before you ask me my opinion about it. My opinion is that I hate you.

Don't Ask Me Questions If You're Not Prepared For The Answer

In the elevator this morning

The CEO: Hey! What are you listening to?

Me: (putting my iPod away) It's on shuffle.

The CEO: So you don't know what you're listening to?

Me: (skipping ahead) Well that was a Snoop Dogg song, the next one would have been Blink-182, then The Creepshow, NOFX, Cake, oooh The Penguins! (holding it up to show The Penquins' "Earth Angel (Will You Be Mine?)" and grinning in victory)

The CEO: (rolling his eyes) I shouldn't have asked.

Me: How to go from Snoop Dogg to The Penguins in six tracks!


My iPod is a dangerous realm for the uninitiated, people. Don't try this at home.

TBS: Very Funny (Just Not On TV)

The TBS Just For Laughs comedy festival sponsored by Twix (clearly the most hilarious of all candy bars) was this past week and I was lucky enough to be a part of the very first event AND the very last event, while seeing my future husband and getting a bunch of free candy in between. Every bit of it was fantastic and way the hell funnier than the TBS prime time line up of shows, most of which can be described in almost any way you want except "very funny". But allow me to start at the beginning.

The festival kicked off in the most awesome way possible: by confusing the shit out of tourists. The MP3 Experiment is a flash mob* created by the group Improv Everywhere in which participants download an MP3 to their iPod (or similar), synchronize their watches with the atomic clock on the website, show up in an appointed place wearing an appointed color shirt and at an appointed time everyone presses "play" and follows the instructions. I'd been to one before about three years ago, and while it was fun, it was cold and raining and not a lot of people showed up. Not so this time. I got on the train to go downtown and immediately noticed a group of about five people in solid colored t-shirts of red, green and yellow attempting to covertly drink a batch of vodka and lemonade from a tube they'd rigged to a container in one guy's backpack who were clearly up to the same antics I was. In fact, about 1,000 other people turned out to be up to the same antics I was. I installed myself near the bean and played a quick game of "Who else do I think is playing?" while I waited for it to be 1:30. At 1:30, chaos organization erupted. Here is a short video of it. A few awesome people with no idea what was going on decided it was best to just go with it, and started following us around doing whatever they saw us doing. The highlight for me was during our attempt to make ourselves into a giant target. While crushed in with all the other people wearing green shirts, I found myself looking at two guys standing near me who were looking right back and grinning. "Dude, you're the girl from the train!" one of them said. "I KNEW it! I knew you were playing!" High fives were exchanged, vodka lemonade was shared, memories were made. It was an amazing day**.

 The following Thursday, I forewent my usual drinking night at Tai's and instead met up with Mr and MrsTrivia, Mr. and Mrs. Paulblo and Mr. and Mrs. Eldest of the Brothers Whose Last Name Rhymes With Schmongola for dinner at Elephant and Castle before making our collective way over to the Chicago Theater to see Demetri Martin and Some of His Friends Who Are Also Comedians. Demetri Martin, by the way, is going to marry me someday when he finally meets me and falls hopelessly in love with me and my hilarious t-shirts. I wore one to the show which I thought he would like, but as I was sitting in the balcony he didn't see it and instead pulled some other guy up on stage to look at his t-shirt (said guy had asked Demetri what was with his very plain shirt because it wasn't funny and Demetri brought him up for a comparison. Guy's t-shirt was a drawing of Jesus shooting Charles Darwin in the head and read "Evolve this". "So my shirt just has a line on it and isn't funny, and your shirt is what's wrong with America," Demetri observed. Point Demetri). The show and everyone on was hilarious (though I think Kristen Schaal was holding back her best stuff for her own show which makes total sense), in particular Hannibal Buress, who we are seeing again in July. I was sitting in a different place from the others who were downstairs and MrTrivia had graciously offered me a ride home, so we had agreed to meet out front at the end of the show. On the way out I received several complimentary Twix bars which amazingly happened to be the exact size of fun:

 



This is precisely how big fun is.

 Outside , I walked over close to the street and began scanning the crowd for MrTrivia and/or the rest of our party. Seeing none of them, I texted him and said "I'm already outside! What do I win?"

"I am too right in front. Where r u?" he responded.

I looked around for him some more but didn't see him. "Right in the middle near the street" I replied and continued looking. As I did so, I noticed a tallish man standing right in front of me turn around slowly. Upon sighting me he said "Seriously?" We'd been standing right next to each other for five minutes without noticing.

The festival closed last Sunday with a show titled Steve Martin and Martin Short in a Very Stupid Conversation. When I saw that Steve Martin was coming to town I freaked a little. I've been wanting to see him live since I was about 7 years old, right around the first time I saw the King Tut clip from SNL in re-run. A good chunk of my childhood was spent next door with my best friend Mary watching Dirty Rotten Scoundrels nearly every other day (also we were watching a lot of Jean-Claude Van Damme movies for which I have no explanation save that we were very young). Martin Short is no slouch either, and the show opened with various clips of their work, including their appearance together in The Three Amigos, a little Ed Grimly and the absolutely legendary Great Flydini. They then had a piss funny conversation in which they interviewed one another, Short interviewing Steve martin about himself, Martin interviewing Martin Short about what he thought of Steve Martin. Martin Short sang a song, Steve Martin played the banjo (brilliantly - there's a reason the man's won 4 Grammys) and then Short returned to the stage and interviewed Steve Martin again as Jiminy Glick. Meanwhile, I was pissing myself, had tears streaming down my face and laughed so hard and so long my abs still hurt four days later. It was funny on an absolutely insane level that should not be achievable without performance enhancing drugs and well worth the quarter century wait.

Demetri: Call me.

*Note to the City of Chicago, CPD and Chicago area news outlets: the crime spree you've been witnessing this summer involving roving bands of teenagers ganging up on individuals in the downtown area to beat up and rob them which you all have been calling a flash mob? Stop doing that. Try group thugging, gang activity, or some other wording of your choice. That is not what flash mob means.

**It started out that way anyway. In case anyone is wondering what happened to the other two posts I was planning about my trip to England, due to an e-mail (!) I received when I got home from flash mobbing, I just don't feel like writing them anymore. Sorry.

Spell Check Break

Blogger spell check doesn't like real Welsh words any better than the ones I made up. VOWELS, DAMN IT, USE VOWELS.

Britannia 2011 - Parte The Seconde

Chester

Chester is an old Roman city near the border with Wales, and one of the best preserved walled cities anywhere in Britain. It is well defended to this day - the comic and I drove past our hotel and all the way back around the ring road no less than four times because all roads either lead away from it, are one way streets in the wrong direction, or are under construction with traffic diverted in the opposite direction from where we needed to go. Eventually we admitted defeat and parked in the car park meant for the nearby shopping center. These frustrations were immediately forgotten upon looking out our bedroom window and seeing this directly across the street:



Roman amphitheater, which thankfully was not showing "The Hangover 2".

This was obviously a cause for celebration and we immediately went out and found an Italian restaurant where we ate and drank like motherfuckers, then drunk dialed H-town in Baltimore, yelled something at her about art lovers and equilibrium and stumbled back to the hotel to sleep it off.

The next day we walked around the city, and by walked around the city I actually mean "around" - with almost all of the walls still intact, you can basically walk all the way around on the top of them. There are also spectacular little plaques along the way, inscribed with facts about the their construction, the history of the area, and random factoids (also a recipe), the best of which was this one:



This is awesome and henceforth is the standard by which I will judge the information on all other plaques.

Wales

We left Chester with considerably more ease than we'd had getting there and drove to Wales. Wales is a country of immense beauty, but also a completely insane, largely unpronounceable and completely unspellable language. They have a thing for doubling letters unnecessarily causing their words to be ridiculously long and while the Welsh language does have vowels, they are loathe to use them unless they've completely run out of doubled consonants.



A river running through Llangollen, where we stayed, which in English is the River Dee, but in Welsh is probably spelled more like Gogllywnnscestt or Wydnollffydd or something like that.

Here's the thing about Wales, ok? Because I'm from Chicago by way of Cleveland, right? So I know what cold feels like. When you walk out your door here and it's 2 degrees Fahrenheit with a windchill making it feel more like 12 below, that is a cold that will slap you right in the face, rip off your nipples, then shrivel your lungs into raisins. Whoever came up with the adage "Don't make a fact like that, it might freeze that way forever" was almost certainly standing outside in Chicago in January when he said it. What I'm trying to say is, I've been cold before.

But not like this.

The cold in Wales is a cold like no other cold I've ever experienced. It's a damp, heavy cold that gets in you and stays there, obliterating all hope that you might ever feel warm again. In Chicago, when it's cold, you just go inside, wait two minutes and then Presto! - you are warm. I spent less than 24 hours in Wales, but even after I went inside, even after I'd left, I stayed cold for six days. It was like someone had filled my soul with equal parts sorrow, hopelessness and dead puppies. I'm still recovering.

Other than that, though, Wales is beautiful, the audience at the comic's gig was brilliantly weird and whatever I had for dinner was delicious (I don't remember what it was because alcohol happened. Oh wait! Prawns? I think it had something to do with prawns). And then I went to bed to get some rest for the next day's planned activities, which didn't happened due to there being a drunk comedian in the room who was snoring like it's his job. It didn't matter - we ended up doing none of the things we'd originally planned to do anyway, but with good reason: the comic realized suddenly that Penrith is sort of on the way to Newcastle.



For an account of my time in Chester and Wales in which I do not actually appear other than a veiled reference to the terrible weather being my fault, check out the comic's blog.

Britannia 2011 - Parte The Firste

Arrival and Punky!

I'm not gonna lie, the TSA scares the shit out of me. Something about the combination of their absolute authority in deciding whether or not I pose a threat to my fellow travelers combined with my paralysing fear of public embarrassment makes the "please take off your shoes" portion of my trip the most harrowing part of the whole experience. Why, then, I decided to wear a fencenet body stocking under my t-shirt and jeans instead of underwear and a bra like a normal person is quite beyond my ability to comprehend. It seemed like a good idea when I left the house. It seemed like an incredibly bad idea when I got in the security line and realized there were only two lines open: one regular line and one irradiating porn producing body scanner line. So I was already on edge when the boarding pass checker with the rapist mustache who I was still thirty people away from caught my eye from across the room and yelled "Honey, you've been distracting me for the last 15 minutes!" All heads swiveled in my direction and I laughed nervously and suggested it was due to my pink hair, which coincidentally was now also the precise color of my face. "That and your amazing smile," he said, and I cringed because it was obvious I was going to get flagged for one of those "enhanced pat downs" of which he was sure to surreptitiously photograph me getting felt up with no undergarments to protect me. That didn't happen, of course - I'm just paranoid. Either that or I've repressed the memory, it's hard to say. At any rate, I got to Heathrow as planned, traded my clothes for a raincoat as planned, met the comic sort of as planned, and went to Luton which was not at all planned, but was necessary if I wanted to see my friend Steve, who chose to time his trip to Spain for exactly the same time as my trip to England. I spent an hour chatting with the group in Steve's pub while drinking out of the comic's Stanley Cup shot glass (it is so choice. If you have the means, I highly recommend picking one up)  and trying to deflect questions about why I refused to remove my coat.

On Tuesdays, the comic and his partner Manly Tony record Punky! Radio over Skype. On my first Tuesday in town, they recorded the 300th episode of Punky! in front of a live "studio" (the comic's lounge) audience. Said audience included myself, my darling Sulu and her husband G, Felix a.k.a Hamboy (formerly of the recorder band The Blow Jobs - Felix claims they broke up due to musical similarities) and a guy called Phil who inexplicably carries around a bazouki in the back of his car.

A bazouki player (not Phil)

This came in very handy as Felix had brought three recorders and a tambourine with him and we performed an impromptu mashup of White Riot and Blitzkrieg Bop. I also got to tell the story of the guy who got his face kicked in at Riotfest and introduce the song I had picked out for the show, "She's Only Fucking 12" by 3CR.

We'd had a lot to drink by the end of the show and so the obvious thing to do was go out for Italian food and drink two more bottles of wine at dinner, then head over to the Arena Tavern for some further beers. While the rest of us were comparing our various mobile devices and the games contained therein, the comic wandered off and found a man he'd met recently but whose name he couldn't recall and brought him over to our table in the hopes that he'd introduce himself to the rest of us so the comic could pretend like he'd known his name all along. This plan went awry (as his plans often do) when, upon encountering Sulu and I sitting in close proximity, the stranger abandoned all social niceties and ignoring everyone else greeted us with the question "Are you two lesbians?" I told him we were, but only on Tuesdays.

Having said our goodbyes to the others, the comic, Tony and I went back to the flat, at which time a sane group of people would have gone to bed. Instead, Tony decided to edit Punky! so we could upload it that very night and we all consumed the last of the wine, the port, and half of another bottle of port, then drunk dialed Kelly in Los Angeles for reasons I can no longer remember. Eventually Tony went to bed, while the comic and I stayed up listening to Demented Are Go long past the time my desire to go to bed had kicked in because the comic wanted to hear "PVC Chair" and kept insisting it was the next track, though it never was. We finally got in bed some time after dawn, drunk as fuck and in no shape to get up, pack, and drive to Chester the next day.

The next day we got up, packed and drove to Chester.

Britannia 2011 - An Introduction

I started to write a post about my trip to England last month only to realize that there was no way for me to make it one post. In the interest of seeing everything his land has to offer, the comic took me on a whirlwind tour that seemed designed to cram everything it was possible to see into one go, from which I am only now starting to recover. The immediate trip to Cleveland upon my return has not helped my situation, nor has dealing with the post office, who allowed my address to be fraudulently changed just before I left, thus ensuring that the half a dozen things I had ordered off of Amazon would be returned to the sender and my insurance company would threaten to drop me for not telling them I had moved. I will attempt to reconstruct the last two weeks over the rest of this one, so please be patient with me - I am still fragile and covered in bruises (not those kind. Ok, those too, but mostly the ones caused by my being particularly accident prone on this trip. That's my story and I'm sticking to it, unless you know where to go to find the truth, in which case the truth will be out there soon, I promise).