I Should Not Be Allowed At Concerts

A conversation between my cousin Kelly and me on the occasion of StereoNinja taking me to see Arcade Fire, which I was uncomfortable about it because the only thing I knew about Arcade Fire was that I'd heard of them, maybe: 

me: We are going to Arcade Fire tonight and I feel kinda bad because I literally do not know even one Arcade Fire song and [StereoNinja] is SO EXCITED and I'm like "whee I guess, I don't know". Am I the only person who doesn't have any idea what Arcade Fire are like? I think maybe I am.

Kelly: I've gotta tell you about arcade fire from my pov.

1. they're talented.
2. there's A LOT of them
3. you're prolly not gonna like the music.

me (now at the show): People are dressed up like it's some kind of masquerade and there are hipster beards EVERYWHERE help help

Kelly: oh shit. i forgot to mention the hipsters. aaaah, masquerade, yeah that sounds about right. is there an opener?

me: Oh my god the opener was AWFUL and they played 45 minutes I don't even
Ok a metal Michael Jackson just popped up on the stage where the djs are and is dancing, why am I not into drugs?!?!?
Ok they are on now...this band really likes hexagons there's like a million of them
A guy has a light box for a head and the curly haired lady was shinning lights on us with mirrors this is hilarious
Pretty sure the entire band raided bono's wardrobe

Kelly: aaah, a few scarves and orange sun glasses??

me: Also bizarre suit jackets. Ok you were right I don't get it at all. It's listenable but I can't tell any songs apart and if I never heard them again they wouldn't be missed. Everyone around me is losing their minds however

Kelly: yuuuuuup.... that's pretty much it

Cockles And Mussels, Alive, Alive, Oh

Having seen the weather report in our area for last weekend (a month's worth of rain in 48 hours), and having failed to remember to plan anything for a trip to Prague (remembering stuff is not StereoNinja's forte and my ongoing depression battle is fucking with memory type things - I'm feeling quite a bit better by the way), StereoNinja and I decided on a last minute escape to Dublin for the weekend. (It's a good thing we did - while the flooding did not return to the levels it was at when our only road got swallowed by the Thames, we found out from neighbors that the power was out to the island from late Friday morning until Sunday afternoon. Everything in our house from the oven to the the heating is electric. It would have been like camping and as previously explained I do not camp.) And I'm kind of in love with it now.

I had never been to Dublin before, and StereoNinja had never managed to go there while also having a good time. Since I really don't know a lot about Ireland, I didn't have any real expectations of what it would be like. What it is like is awesome. Without travelling anywhere else on the Earth I haven't already been, I will say with total confidence that Dublin has the friendliest cab drivers in the world. Seriously, apart from one or two guys (we took cabs EVERYWHERE because we decided to escape rain by going someplace that was also pissing down rain because we're imbeciles) every cab driver wanted to know all about us and what brought us to Dublin, professed to adore America, gave informal city tours complete with history about buildings (which sometimes have no windows because England used to tax windows so they just built them without any because fuck you), gave solicited and unsolicited advice on what we should see and where we should drink, and generally rounded fares down to avoid anyone have to deal with coins which I thought was great because I despise them.

I was a bit worried before we got on the plane about whether there would be anything for me to eat there. Since I don't like potatoes, and the stereotype of Ireland is that everything is made out of potatoes there, I was somewhat concerned that I might starve to death. This turned out to be entirely unfounded. The restaurants in Dublin are universally spectacular, based on the fact that every time one of us said "Do you want to just go in here?" the food there was so good I had to be restrained from humping it. Maybe the best Italian restaurant I've ever been to in my life was in Dublin (amaretto tiramisu you guys. AMARETTO TIRAMISU). We went to a french place for lunch and I loved it, and if you remember I wouldn't eat much of anything when I was in actual France.

We also partook of Dublin's many museums. Recommended for nerds: The Science Gallery at Trinity College, currently running the "Fail Better" exhibit - a collection of inventions that didn't work, but which led to advances in science or some other positive contribution. Recommended for sheer hilarity: The Ireland Natural History Museum, which seems to basically be a room full of taxidermied animals of varying age, quality, and disrepair. The fucking massive extinct deer skeletons near the entrance are singularly impressive. The basking shark hanging from the ceiling, if I'm being kind, has probably seen better days. To be fair to the museum, the upper and lower floors of it are currently closed, but on the other hand it is severely lacking in any information on the animals apart from their name.

Deer: huge; impressive.

Basking shark: c'mon, man.

Our first cab driver, upon hearing that we wanted to go hear some real Irish music, directed us to the Brazen Head, which is self described as the oldest pub in Ireland. It was described by the cab driver as "nearly a thousand years old". It's actually a little over 900 years old, but I suppose "nearly a thousand" is correct depending on where you're rounding from. We met a nice German kid there, but did not meet the Brazilians who were also in the house. I know they were there because of the gregarious and extremely drunk Irishman who kept shouting at them, "BRAZIL? BRAZIL? THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING IN DUBLIN ALL THE WAY FROM BRAZIL?" There was a little group in the corner playing, who unfortunately had a broken amplifier and were therefore mostly drowned out by the noise from the table of vapid, oblivious women who were all talking at once AS LOUD AS POSSIBLE and failed to notice either the music or the collective death stare of literally everyone else in the room. That was until an enterprising guy at the next table started a shushing campaign that grew until the ENTIRE pub would hiss at them every time they got out of hand.

We also checked out the Guinness Storehouse, home of all things Guinness. For those of you Americans who have been to the Budweiser brewery in St. Louis, just, no. The Storehouse makes that place look like a miniaturized Lego model of a brewery, it is that massive. Additionally, when you get up to the top where your free pint of Guinness awaits you, not only do they take the time and care to draw you a lovely shamrock in your foam, but the 360 degree windows that make up the walls of the room give you an aerial view of the entirety of Dublin and beyond, all the way to the mountains in one directions and all the way to the sea in another. Of course, I used the opportunity to text Cap and taunt him because I am an asshole sister.

Enjoy your beer, insignificant speck of a human.

Dublin, with its abundant cabs, myriad of pubs, river flowing through it, cool stuff to do, nice people, great food and many college students, reminded me quite a lot of Chicago. Except for this one thing that happened that made me realize how spoiled Americans are. Because one thing we have precious little of in America is domestic terrorism. When bombs go off at the Boston Marathon or Oklahoma City or the Atlanta Olympics, they are weird, isolated things that shock us because it is not a thing that happens in America, so infrequently in fact that we don't even think about it and take that for granted. Meanwhile, in Dublin, in our first cab on the way to the hotel, the very friendly cab driver/tour guide/historian said to us, "This is a great area right here. It used to have statues absolutely everywhere, on all these corners. But of course the IRA blew them all up." And he said it with such casual resignation, because stuff used to blow up there - a lot - and that was his normal. So, you know, be aware of how lucky you are and shit, because you could think that all your statues blowing up is normal.

ANYBUTT, I fucking LOVED Dublin, as evidenced by everything that came out of my mouth while we were there was prefaced by "Next time we come, we should..." and that's just not something I typically say because I am of the television generation and easily bored. You should totally go there if you like doing things that are fun and/or being around nice people. You should probably also be okay with a bit of rain and own an umbrella.

Unintentional Hiatus FAQ

Were you kidnapped and killed at the 50 Shades meet up?

No, no one has been kidnapped and nobody died. Unless you mean OF LAUGHTER. We had an absolutely awesome time, once we completely abandoned the 50 Shades party game, which sucked horse cadaver balls, and switched to Cards Against Humanity (which is also when we found out that we are all terrible people). I am excited about the real post when I will actually tell you about it.

In that case, where the hell have you been?

All over the place, both mentally and figuratively. I was in England and in France for a good while, during which I was somehow remarkably busy, and then I came back to Chicago to an unbelievable amount of crap going on. I have so much to do that sometimes I get overwhelmed and I call up StereoNinja and cry at him. Not to him. AT him.

What kind of crap?

Oh well, let's see...there's the part where I'm losing my job at the end of this month and I'm frantically putting together notes for the handover to the people who are going to start doing my job and also my boss is panicking and making me INSANE and also BrownsFan is already gone and I CANNOT COPE WITHOUT HER. There's also the thing where I spent Sunday to Wednesday of this week systematically calling everyone in my family and telling them that a) I am leaving forever in a few months, and b) I have been hiding information and/or lying to them for MONTHS now, for a very good reason but lying nonetheless, which fortunately they were all really, really, REALLY understanding and very nice about. And let's not forget the part where I'm making up a dance and a costume and a new name so I can get on stage in less than three months and take my clothes of to music, which reminds me...in related news, I seem to have become involved with a group of very nice people who spend their Tuesday nights drawing pictures of a naked person for two hours. (The naked person is me.)

What ever happened to that thing where you claimed you were moving to England?

Well, that's actually the thing that is taking up all of my time and energy and preventing me from blogging. I can tell you now that I have been accepted into my first choice of graduate school, which is in London, and will be starting my program in October. Which means that in between now and then I have to get rid of 95% of my earthly belongings, sort out shipping and/or storage for the other 5%, gather all the cash up front that I will need for both tuition and living expenses and then prove to both the school and the British government that I have it just sitting there in cash and that they won't have to support my freeloading American ass through social services, apply for a visa, go to an interview for said visa, buy a plane ticket, and literally dozens of other tasks both big and small that come with the decision to move to a different country.

Are you ever going to blog again?

YES OH MY GOD YES. I miss it so, so much, I can't even describe it. But seriously, I am completely wiped out right now. I think if you guys can just give me til the end of April, I can get back to more regular posting and shenanigans. I'll still have all this moving and dance stuff to do, but I won't have a job anymore starting May 1, so that should free up some time, stress, and brain space for the shit I actually LIKE doing.
Don't get me wrong - everything is GREAT right now and I am happier than I have ever been in my entire life. It's just that there's TONS of work involved with my life being this great, and a looming deadline to get all of that work done. I'm trying really hard to get back here, I really miss you guys.

More Lame Excuses

I've started writing a couple different posts for today, but one will never be finished in time (the next review, which will only cover two chapters because HOLY BALLS ALL OF THE STUPID), and the other one I got 90% finished with before I realized I wasn't emotionally prepared to post that announcement yet (or maybe I am, but I need to talk to a few more people so they don't find out the news from my blog instead of in person because they will be maybe not so pleased if I tell the entire internets first). So basically, you get a new review tomorrow!, a new video maybe tomorrow, but definitely soon (it's being edited), and a major life announcement whenever I stop dragging my feet and tell my family anything that goes on in my life.

In much more important news, there are ONLY 47 DAYS LEFT UNTIL MY BIRTHDAY.

I'm Going To Get In Serious Trouble For This One

Feel free to just skip this one - it's late and I'm rambling, and I've just finished chapters 2-4 of a book that should have been called Fifty Times More Tedious (Than My Other Two Piece of Shit Books) in the hope that I could cover their entire honeymoon in one blog post, apparently having forgotten that James narrates every single second of every single day and that the entirety of the book probably only covers the last three days of the honeymoon. I've talked someone else into editing the video for me, but he's quite busy so it will be ready when it's ready and then you can all see me yelling and gesturing at no one. Also, apparently I rest my hand on my chest while I'm reading a lot. It looks like I'm reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. My point is I'm kind of crabby right now, and the rest of this post is kind of crabby as well and likely to make some relatives very, very angry, and I'm just too tired to care.

Today would have been my mother's 64th birthday. I'm feeling guilty about it because I had forgotten until evening, and when I remembered I felt nothing.

I spent a long time getting upset on days like today, but I seem to have stopped around five or six years ago. I also seem to be the only one. My brother did a charity bike race this year in her honor, and the rest of my family had some sort of dinner thing, both to commemorate the 20th anniversary of her death. I went to see H-Town in an improv festival instead. The whole thing seemed sort of morbid and arbitrary to me. I'm not sure why people enjoy round numbers so much, or why 20 years should be more important somehow than 19 years or 21.

Six years ago marked the point where I'd spent as much time on the earth after her death as I had before it. I think that's when I realized how much of my life had been defined by losing my mother at 14. That's a pretty shitty experience to make the focal point of your entire life and I got really, really irritated about it, which is why I stopped doing the family stuff surrounding it and stopped reading the inevitable emails I get from family members on the "important" days. I get that a lot of people find rituals important and cleansing and that's great for them, but I'm not one of them. And I'm done now pretending to be someone I'm not. For me, the time to remember my mother has nothing to do with when her birthday is or when she died. I think of my mother at Christmas. Christmas was her favorite holiday just like mine, which is probably because she made it something magical when I was a kid and I never managed to outgrow it (or because I am fascinated by shiny things). And it holds much better memories than her birthday (I don't remember a single one of them) or her death day (fucking TERRIBLE).

I don't really know where I was going with this - like I said, I'm really tired. But it's the best I can do by way of apologizing to my family for not getting wrapped up in The Great Mourning twice a year the way I suppose it makes sense that I'm expected to. It's just not for me. You guys can do what you like, but imma stick with the days that had smiles.

Having A Social Life Makes It Really Hard To Blog Sometimes

I was told this morning by StereoNinja that I am being a shitty blogger in 2012 so far. Which I know, but see, there's this thing where I'm busy at my job and travelling and other excuses both legit and complete and utter bullshit. One of them is that I went on an epic trip to Austin last weekend. And I really want to tell you all about it, but chronologically it doesn't make sense if I skip over all of December and my birthday. Also, personally it doesn't make sense either. I have never skipped December or my birthday, they are my favorite things. So herein I will attempt to briefly recap the last month and a half so that in the next post I can describe the most epic reunion of my entire life. Cool? Cool.

A Brief Recap of What Amberance Has Been Up To Since Early December, Minus The Parts That Are None of Your Business and You Don't Want to Know About Anyway (Trust Me)

• On December 10th, as advertised, I walked onto a stage at Martyr's with 16 other women and took off all my clothes in front of hundreds of strangers and it. was. AWESOME. Despite it being oddly disconcerting to be walking around in a bar all night in a nightie and a robe while everyone else around me was dressed, but whatever. The show on the whole was excellent. The girls graduating were amazingly talented and creative and their acts included a girl who stripped to the Imperial March as Darth Vader and left the mask on the entire time, two girls who did a number together to Bon Jovi's "Dead or Alive" in which one of them was the cowboy and the other one was her horse, and a girl who according to Michelle L'Amour said that she wanted to do a number in which "I do all of the things you always tell us we should never do", and so did a completely disinterested strip tease dressed in a ratty house coat with her hair a complete mess and a cigarette dangling out of her mouth, then finished with taking her bra off to reveal another flesh colored bra underneath to which she had sewn baggy tits that hung down to her knees and when she couldn't get the nipple tassels to twirl she just picked them up in her hand with a shrug and juggled them. It was the most hilarious strip tease I have ever seen.
• The bartender bought me an auto hammer for Christmas and I was filled with joy. I am a tool for tools. And puns.
• The next day I flew to Cleveland for two days because something is seriously wrong with me. I packed a backpack for the trip. My brother had also come to town, for four days, and had brought three huge suitcases and a garment bag, prompting me to ask my dad if it was weird for him that his son is his daughter and his daughter is his son (I did, after all, get an auto hammer for Christmas).
• I saw my brother again the following weekend when he came to town for the annual New Year's Eve party thrown by some friends of ours. My loving brother greeted me with a loud "Fuck you," when I walked in, due to my having worn an amazing tank top with chains and tiny handcuffs for straps that everybody but him loved, including all the women who were pregnant which was ALL OF THEM.
• The following week we had our work holiday party, to which I took the gorilla after giving me his word that he would behave himself. I shouldn't have worried, he was absolutely fine. It was me and my coworkers who were out of control, but it wasn't our fault - someone had brought a Shake Weight to the gift exchange which we were inappropriate about, and then we were under the minimum for the contract we'd signed, so the obvious thing to do was to order lots more booze which led to me teaching everyone how to twirl nipple tassels and shouting "It's PHYSICS" at everyone who tried to object.
• The following Monday I flew to Portland and didn't even try to kill my boss once!
• Which leads us to my Amber's Super Ultra Fantabulous Birthtacular Celebration Extravaganza: Now With MORE KELLY! weekend. This did not start out well. El Nino or whatever the hell the weather is doing had kept things pleasantly warm and dry in Chicago this winter, right up until the night of my birthday when it decided to drop 8 inches of snow on us overnight. This meant that only Charlie and Mrs. Sizemore showed up to my party at Tai's and got to see my Epic Cake which depicted me in not a whole lot of clothing.

  

  So hot it is literally on fire.

  This gave me the opportunity, after we had partially eaten it, to yell "WHO IS GOING TO EAT MY CROTCH?" at some innocent strangers for a totally legitimate reason. Earlier in the day, I had taken my pink princess wand to work with me in order to command people to do my bidding, such as wear hats and sing to me, and had ended up using it help my co-worker figure out what NOT to get his wife for her birthday by waving it at him after every suggestion and saying "No, that's stupid." Because of this, I decided to name it the Wand of Truth and then brought it to the bar and had a duel with the bartender and his magic wand because his Schwartz was as big as mine. The next day, Kelly and Mike showed up and we spent the weekend playing Pulse on our respective iPads and eating/drinking our faces off. Kelly ate some caterpillars. Lots more awesome things happened, but that is the thing that stands out - Kelly eating her way through a plate of caterpillars at Sticky Rice.

So that about brings us up to speed, and though I've missed some major things out (see bolded header), I feel better about blogging the Epic Austin Trip. Which I will do shortly to avoid further admonishments from StereoNinja. You don't want to piss off a ninja*.

*he is not a real ninja**.
*OR IS HE?

40 Days Friday Music Update

Ok, so I was so wrapped up in my public nudity event, I completely forgot to blog y'all some holiday music on Friday, so I'm going to cheat and backdate this post I'm writing to Friday (it's Monday night) and also meet the funny song/cheesy song/classic song criteria all in one song because I'm too lazy to pick three songs out. So here it is:

"Santa Claus and His Old Lady" - Cheech and Chong: My dad has very one dimensional taste in music. As in the only band he likes is Led Zeppelin, much to the chagrin of my step mother. In fact, there's only two songs I've ever heard him listen to on purpose that aren't Led Zeppelin songs: Arlo Guthrie's "Alice's Restaurant" on Thanksgiving, and "Santa Claus and His Old Lady" at Christmas time. This is a stoner Christmas masterpiece (such a stoner masterpiece that I'm suddenly wondering why he let us listen to this all the time when we were little). Recession, repression - it's all the same thing, man.

Day 14 And I Recap Kelly's Wedding

I was going to do another "Bizzybiz Wedding Awards" thingy, like I did for her sister's wedding, but really, a lot of the categories don't apply so much here outside of Best Kept Secret (Kelly, for successfully hiding a purple wedding dress), Best Use of the Union Jack at an American Wedding (which was the same as last time, except that we knew it was coming this time, so we prepared ahead of time and followed it with an Ohio Smackdown by O-H-I-Oing to the McCoy's "Hang On Sloopy" because my family are fucking rock stars) and Furthest Distance Traveled, which would have been the folks who came from Poland, but I don't know their names and really everyone traveled pretty far with the exception of Kelly and Michael. My point is I'm not doing that. I'm just going to chronologically hit the highlights.

I arrived later on Wednesday night than I should have because I was stupid enough to fly United and they broke our plane, as they do. The gorilla has promised to punch me in the face if I ever try to fly United again. Anywhore, Kelly and Michael picked me up and drove me to the hotel, where Kelly's family had arrived from England and were drinking in the hotel bar. By the time I'd set down my stuff and gone down to say hello, the bar had closed, which led to much complaining since hotel bars in the U.K. never close until the last person drinking gives up. We stayed for a little while while they finished beers and the discussion revolved around the couch from Friends and whether anyone had ever watched the show for reasons I will never be able to sufficiently explain.

Thursday night was girls night out, which was planned, and boys night out, which was apparently not planned, but went more along the lines of "The girls are going out? Oh, we should probably do that too." We went to a restaurant for a lovely meal, I drank a sangria because I had asked for the wine that tastes the most like candy, and then we all dressed up in Mardi Gras beads and went down to a bar in Venice that used to be Kelly's local. Immediately on walking in, we encountered two young gentlemen who showed us their muscles in exchange for beads. The both immediately started hitting on Kelly's grandmother. Come to think of it, all kinds of men were hitting Kelly's grandmother all weekend long. One of the guys also noticed that Kelly's friend Chuck was with us and observed "You must be gay." He is. There was much rejoicing.

By this time we were winding down because we are actually pretty old. Boys night had already been wrapped up, and Kelly's dad had come to pick a few of us up in the van. On arriving back at the hotel, I discovered the English boys and the very charming Franklin (a friend of Michael's who was a groomsman and also my aisle-walking partner because I win) had solved the bar closing problem of the night before by buying out the entire stock of beer from the sundry and drinking it sitting in the lobby. Obviously, I joined them. Everyone else went to bed. We did too, but not until 3 a.m. and certainly not before I'd had a chance to rant about how The History Channel is a complete failure at showing programs that involve any actual history, Ghosthunters is the stupidest show on television, Nostradamus accurately predicted precisely jack shit and the Mayans probably just ran out of paper, an observation that Franklin the history teacher found particularly amusing.

Friday night was the rehearsal dinner at a place called Vito's and if it is not a front for the Los Angeles mafia it fucking well should be. Eating at Vito's is not so much having a meal as it is having an experience. Courses get served one at a time with long breaks in between during which massive amounts of wine are consumed - we ate dinner for 3 1/2 hours. I sat with my aunt and uncle recapping the more hilarious parts of the actual rehearsal and drinking iced tea (the deleterious effects of drinking with Englishmen still fresh in my memory from my trip in September, I was wise enough to skip a day). I ate so much I was genuinely concerned about fitting into my dress the next day.

The actual wedding was quite possibly the most hilarious ceremony I've ever been to. Kelly and Michael both struggled to repeat their vows (the really were very long sentences) and Kelly actually interrupted hers because she was laughing so hard at the tiny bug that was crawling around on Michael's collar. I managed to keep my composure while Franklin read the poem he'd written for them, but only because I'd heard it the night before. I barely held my shit together when Kelly's uncle read an excerpt from The Velveteen Rabbit.

I split the rest of the evening fairly evenly between dancing and a series of conversations with Franklin, Simon, Jo and a girl called Jen who was actually working there in a fancy room that had an actual name, but that I kept calling "the hookah room" because it seemed like a room that should have one. At one point, Simmy ran up to me and yelled "Bridesmaid shot!", so the four bridesmaids linked arms and ran up to the bar where I screamed "WE NEED A SHOT FOR GIRLS!"

When the night had wound down, I said a tearful goodbye to Jen (I was convinced we were real friends at that point) and took one of the shuttles back to the hotel, a trip that consisted of my brother yelling a lot, Simon being embarrassed by his father, and someone stupidly handing me a camera to take photos for them, which obviously led to me convincing Simon to take a photo down my shirt so that someone I don't know could be surprised by a photo of my boobs the next day. Also, Simon kept repeating how he couldn't believe that Cap and I were brother and sister, being as we're so different and he is so loud, which was met with hysterical laughter when I told the family about it the next day. It's funny because it's true.

Congratulations Kelly and Michael!

Day 13 And AAAAAGGGHHHHHH!

Spiders. There were massive fuck off spiders the size of my fist in the garden at the wedding and apparently that is TOTALLY FUCKING NORMAL IN LOS ANGELES AND NOBODY WARNED ME. By the way, fuck all of you for not warning me.

I noticed this while standing outside waiting to have photos of the wedding party taken in this gazeboish thingy. I was standing with the boys because, hi, it's me, and we were all near some sort of fruit tree. When I gave it a closer look I realized the entire thing was covered in spider webs. "Um. You guys. There's, like, a million spider webs in that tree." They turned to look.

"HOLY SHIT look at that spider!" In the tree in a spot I mercifully couldn't see, the boys had found a spider so massive that even they were grossed out by it and everyone moved away from the tree. But for me it was too late. Because upon encountering a spider, my brain goes into overdrive and then I can't stop. I looked around and realized I was fucking surrounded - they were in the tree, the bushes, hanging from the power lines. Someone suggested I might calm down if I stopped looking for them, but that's not how it works. Once I know where they are I can't STOP looking at them, because if I look away and then they move, I'm then faced with knowing there IS a spider but NOT knowing how close it is to me which is completely unacceptable.

I maneuvered myself to be as close to the middle of the patio as possible and crouched down on the ground, mumbling insanely and trying desperately to convince everyone around me that my life was in great peril. Whenever this happens I get so hysterical and say such madly ridiculous things that unless they already know me very well, most people assume I'm just exaggerating for effect and/or trying to be funny. The only person around who knew otherwise was Simmy, who blessedly started waving people off when they came over trying to make jokes about about the possibility of spiders getting ON ME or tell me stories about the biggest spider they'd ever seen.

I held it together long enough to make it through the photos and then sprinted (in five inch heels) back into the house where I immediately encountered my father and burst into tears. I sobbed on his shoulder for a good 10 minutes while he led me to go sit with my family who obviously wanted to know what was wrong with me and needed no further explanation from my dad other than "There were spiders." It was my uncle who had the magic words which finally calmed me down enough to stop crying, shaking and eventually go enjoy the wedding. Which I did, and will tell you about tomorrow.

The good news is that I finally feel a feeling about Los Angeles, which is that it can take its fist sized spiders and shove them up its ass.

Day Twelve And I'm A Bit Busy For This Today

This afternoon my fake cousin Kelly will be married to Michael, and with any luck, I will be drunk before dark.

More importantly, today marks two months until my birthday.

Priorities.

Day Ten And...

I'm in Los Angeles.

I've never been here before because I had always assumed that I would hate it. Kelly has been trying to get me to come out here for years, insisting that I would love it. I resisted as long as I could, because I was certain of the opposite. Then she decided to get married and forced my hand. I haven't been here a whole day yet, but the preliminary verdict is already in: I don't hate it.

I nothing it. I have never in my life been in a place I felt more indifferent about. Everywhere else I've had some sort of feeling about either way: 

Chicago - Immediately felt like home, so I made it my home

Baltimore - Hilariously scary

St. Louis - Fun except for their bullshit cheese

Cleveland - Please fucking kill me

Los Angeles - 

My theory is that this is because everything about Los Angeles seems to be things that I simply don't care about. We've discussed recently how much of a fuck I don't give about celebrities. Similarly, I don't understand fashion, never have, never will, and will wear jeans and a t-shirt every single day if left to my own devices. I have zero interest in going to the beach. The only time I see movies is when my roommate comes into the living room and puts them on for me - if you leave the DVD sitting right next to the DVD player, I still can't be arsed to walk over and put it in. It's not that I hate any of these things, I just have so much better shit I could be doing. And Los Angeles is the embodiment of all these things I'm incapable of caring about.

Who knows, I'm here another couple of days and I suppose it's possible I'll develop some sort of opinion other than "meh". For now I'm just happy to report that I was wrong, but so was Kelly.

Day Two And I'm Already Resorting To Chat Convos

Cap: Hold the effing phone...you're going to england in march?
Give me dates

me: oh, yeah. want to come?

Cap: YES
MAN U!!!! Giggs is retiring this year.

me: giggs is retiring every year

Cap: No, this is the first time he's said it
It's always media speculation

me: maybe he'll pull a favre

Cap: I don't want a picture of his dick

me: LOL awesome. you win

England Trip Do Over - Part 3

I woke up Friday to brilliant sunshine and a wide open day. Both of these things are atypical of all my previous trips, so I was very excited. I wandered around by myself for a bit, simply because I could. The one thing I made it a point to do was wander up Tilehouse Street because it is my favorite street in the world. Since I grew up with an English family as a huge part of my extended one, I'd been hearing about it all my life, and had developed a picture of what England looked like in my own head which was shaped entirely around the loose oral history I'd been hearing about since I was 3. My first time visiting the comic he had taken me on a walking tour of Hitchin, which I thought was lovely, right up until we hit the bottom of Tilehouse Street, where I stopped in my tracks and stood with mouth agape. That was it. That was my England. Apart from its not being constantly shrouded in mist (and I've been told to come back at a different time of year because it will be), Tilehouse Street was exactly what I had been picturing all my life. It was like someone had mined my brain, extracted that image and had it built in real life. The comic insisted that was to be expected, as my family was from St. Albans which is just down the road and looks very similar, but I wasn't having it. Magic had just happened. I wanted to stay there forever.

Tilehouse Street

I was getting pretty hungry, having not eaten the night before, and had decided to call Nat the Evil Lesbian to see if she wanted to meet for lunch, but decided first to have a walk through the arcade. Which is where I simply ran into her. It was my second time bumping into someone I knew and I was probably overly excited, as walking around town bumping into people is basically her job desciption. We went and got some lunch which we ate on the lawn at St. Mary's Church, and which led to the only dark point of what was an otherwise perfect day: on finishing our lunch, we were about to throw our rubbish in the bin* when Nat exclaimed, "Oh look, there's a giant spider in there!" There was. A giant, GIANT spider. Like, huge. Like, way bigger than any spider in England has a right to be, because listen up England, one of the reasons that I go there is because there are not supposed to be any huge bugs that can get me, ESPECIALLY not spiders. THIS IS WHY I DON'T GO TO AUSTRALIA OR BRAZIL. You are supposed to be a safe haven for me, and you are RUINING my fantasy of a land of tiny harmless bugs with your ridiculously large bin spiders. CUT IT OUT. Nat, the one who is terrified of actors dressed up in scary outfits who pose no real threat to her whatsoever, for some reason decided to THROW HER THINGS IN THE BIN ANYWAY, thus disturbing the giant spider which obviously WAS a threat to our lives and making me scream like an idiot, "What the fuck do you think you are doing? THERE ARE OTHER BINS. WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?"

When I'd calmed down a bit and thrown my own rubbish away in a different, spider free bin (I made her check before I would get near it), she went about doing the tour guide portion of her town ranger job, and took me inside the church, to meet the coffee guy in the square, and to her office where I bought a bunch of souvenirs including a bottle of delicious apple juice to take home (which did not end up lasting even 24 hours). Right around this time, I got a text from MrBalls, who was on his way into town with his best friend, her husband and their offspring. I went off to meet them at Halsey's for tea where we ended up having the best waiter ever. First of all, he had no idea what cakes they had, so we sent him in to go check. When he came back he still didn't know what one of them was. "It looks like the apple ones, but the decoration on the top is different so I think maybe it's not. But the woman who brings the cakes said this morning that she had changed some of the decorations so it might be. I really don't know." I fell in love with him. After our tea and a fork duel, MrBalls and I popped over to see Felix at his salon before heading to a birthday party at the Sunrunner.

We were early, and so we got our beers and sat outside waiting for the others with one other friend, the mutineer, who had shown up when we did. People started trickling in one at a time, most of whom I didn't know but was introduced to by MrBalls, Nat or Sulu. Much of the night is fuzzy because beer! What I do remember is MrBalls saying the mutineer was the most perverted person he knew, which made my head spin around fast enough to cause whiplash so I could argue the point - they both conceded when I pulled my pink bullet vibrator out of my purse, turned it on and started poking the mutineer in the arm with it. Later, after the party started winding down, he was kind enough to walk me home and make sure I made it safely into my bed.

The next day I got up late and had time for very little other than to have some tea and a shower and get sort of dressed before heading to the train station to collect the stranger, who was spending the afternoon in Hitchin with me. I walked him through the square pointing stuff out as if I owned the place, and we stopped for some coffee and a snack at the coffee stand where I greeted Rick the coffee guy like I'd known him all my life. A light rain dissolved into an absolutely beautiful afternoon, which I missed entirely due to the fact I spent all of it indoors. However, it seemed to be thoroughly enjoyed by the wedding party going on in the hotel right outside my open window, which we spied on in between various attempts to disrupt it.

After walking the stranger back to the train station, I realized it was getting a bit late (by Hitchin standards) and I had better find something to eat before the whole place closed down. This led me to do the unthinkable: I discovered a restaurant BY MYSELF, went inside it BY MYSELF, ordered dinner AND dessert BY MYSELF and somehow got through all of those things without dying or bursting into tears. I got a text from the comic sadly informing me of our F.C.'s latest humiliation (which I had wisely chosen not to watch) and text-gossiped with Nat about our respective transgressions the previous evening.

As mentioned in a previous post, I am not English and I am not 20, and my liver can only handle so much abuse. Consequently, instead of going out on the most lively night of the week, I called it a night and went to bed. Besides, I was meeting Steve for dinner the next day, and I had not yet spent an evening with Steve that didn't end with the room spinning. Sunday would not turn out any different.

*trash in the garbage can

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.

The Legendary Night Of Christmas Eve Eve

Today is Festivus, a time for the Airing of the Grievances and the Feats of Strength, or, if you don't know what I'm talking about, a time to go watch probably the best episode of Seinfeld ever.

Before it was Festivus, today was what I used to call Christmas Eve Eve, which in my family was the last shopping day before Christmas because our festival of holidays lasted three days from Christmas Eve to Boxing Day, after which time we'd eaten so much no one could move.

Christmas Eve Eve holds a special place in my memory because it is the anniversary of the first time I was ever drunk. I was a late bloomer as far as the whole drinking thing (I suppose I had to be a late bloomer at something to make up for my early and enthusiastic adoption of the sex, but I digress). My high school friends weren't big drinkers. I mean, they weren't tee totalers or anything, but most of us were more occupied with playing sports or music or both, and all of us would have been killed and eaten by our parents if we didn't keep up our universally excellent grades. College is where most of the group finally took to the sauce - I've heard stories of my brother running down the road barefoot wearing a flag as a cape his freshman year and I know I was drunk dialed more than once by Kelly and TupperDoug. It was not so for me. In a misguided attempt to please my family, I had started dating and subsequently got engaged to a bible thumping deliberate virgin, and under no circumstances would there be any pre-marital sex or drinking of any kind (the biggest fight we ever had is when some of the guys on his floor were watching porn and I was like "OOO! PORN!" and then found out that The Lord would smite me if I even thought about enjoying porn.) (oh also, even though I was only with him because I thought he was the kind of guy my family wanted me to be with, I found out later that they all hated him because he was an annoying know-it-all and they were all relieved when I broke up with him. So, gigantic waste of time then, except that it came in handy a couple of weeks ago at trivia when I knew who had the highest lifetime batting average in the MLB because he was a walking sports almanac and made me memorize that sort of thing. It was Ty Cobb, by the way, .367.) So that collegiate right of passage was ruined for me. Eventually I broke up with him because SERIOUSLY WHAT THE HELL?, but by then I had graduated and gone back to Cleveland, two years early because I had plenty of time on my hands for studying and going to class since I wasn't drinking or having any sex, and all my friends were still away at school having a normal and more awesome experience.

We would make it a point to get together over breaks. One year on Christmas Eve Eve, I believe in 1999, TupperDoug, Kelly and I realized we all had a little last minute shopping we needed to take care of. Kelly had only just gotten home so our plan was that she would have dinner with her parents and her sister and then she would call us when they were finished and we would go pick her up and head to the McMall. TupperDoug came over to my house where we hung out waiting for the call from Kelly. We waited. And waited. And waited. A number of hours went by and TupperDoug and I were getting a little bit pissy. Finally we called her and this is what she had to say. "I'm sooo sorry you guys, we totally lost track of time. See, we had a bottle of wine with dinner, and then we got to talking and we had another bottle of wine and......... listen, my whole family's drunk. Do you want to just come over here instead?" Obviously we did, so we hopped in the Tuppermobile and headed over, stopping along the way to pick up some beer or something from the liquor store. By the time we got there, a few other friends and neighbors had been called and were sitting around the table with Kelly, Simmy and their parents and they were all drinking toasts to, well, anything really. "Doug and Amber are here YYYYEEEEAAAA!" they shouted, raising their glasses to us and gulping down some wine. "Oh look and they brought beer YYYEEEAAAA!" they shouted, raising their glasses to us and gulping down more wine. TupperDoug and I got right to it. Someone poured me a glass of red and we joined in on what had basically become a "cheers to everything" drinking game. This continued for a long time, as more friends and neighbors kept showing up, because apparently they had called everyone in the address book and said "come drink".

And then the shots started. I specifically remember vodka and moonshine, which Kelly and Simmy's dad had been given by someone for a reason I never cared to find out. There may have been some tequila. Hell, there may have been anything really, I was already half plowed before the shots even started. Despite being the oldest and most experienced drinkers, and also being English, the parents (who are also my pretend aunt and uncle, though for some reason I've been calling them "Mum and Dad" for the better part of 20 years) were already annihilated (the several hour head start probably didn't help matters). So when Simmy's date that night showed up to take her out, her Dad immediately started pouring the guy a shot. What followed was a several minute struggle between the two parents, with Simmy's mother yelling "Stop that! HE'S DRIVING YOUR DAUGHTER!" while trying to pour the shots back into the bottle, even as Simmy's dad was tipping the bottle sideways and pouring even more shots. They bathed the table in spilled vodka.

In the meantime, I had completely lost control of myself. The alcohol hit me hard and also all at once, so I went from interesting conversationalist to totally incoherent in the space of one sentence.

Let's take a break from that and talk about family traits for a moment. You know how sometimes you can look at a family and every has the same nose or the same smile? In my family, we all seem to have the same set of personality traits. For instance, everyone in my family allegedly makes the same face when we are trying to make a point. This was christened "The [My family name] Stare" by the comic when we were visiting Cap and Mrs. Sizemore in St. Louis. Despite not knowing the term because he had only just made it up, Mrs. Sizemore instantly knew what he was talking about and the two of them collapsed into conspiratorial laughter. So there's that one. There's also another one: when we have been drinking we get Loud. My suspicion is that this is due to our collective thinly disguised feeling of smug superiority. When we've had to much to drink, we dispense with the disguise entirely, and because we believe what we have to say is really PROFOUND and IMPORTANT, we all very suddenly go to eleven.

This being the first time I'd ever been drunk we were all about to find this out. The moment I realized I was impaired, I was struck by the desire to inform everyone of the momentousness of the occasion. "YOU GUYS!" I screamed. "I am SUPERDRUNK! You can't let me drink ANY MORE. I AM CUT OFF! DO you hear me? CUT! OFF!" And then I poured myself some more wine and repeated this at top volume throughout the evening.

The "cheers to everything" drinking game was still going on, but now it had evolved (or maybe devolved) into "cheers to drunk dialing". It worked like this: Mum would call someone, the rest of us didn't know who (she may not have either) and then she would say some random thing and the rest of us would erupt with screams and cheering. Everyone would take a drink, mum would hang up, and we'd start the whole process over again. We were having a good time with this until she made one call that started with "Hello! We're all DRUNK!" A mighty roar erupted from the crowd, but then she continued with "So I just wanted to let you guys know that Amber probably won't be coming home tonight." She'd just drunk dialed my parents and then ratted me out. I was too drunk to be furious but had no problem being Loudly Incredulous per the family tradition.

The rest of the night I remember in patches, as drunks are wont to do. At one point my pseudo-uncle was sitting on the kitchen floor mumbling to himself, "Turn your head and cough!" and we have a lovely photo somewhere of my pseudo-aunt standing next to the table covered in empty bottles where she looks for all the world like a spree killer who just happened upon a herd of fresh prostitutes. As for myself, I learned another important lesson that night about me and drinking, which is that when I hit the wall I don't just run into it, I plow through it like the Kool-Aid man yelling "OH YEAH!" while bricks rain down on me. One minute I was fine, the next minute I had passed out on the couch and managed to vomit gallons of red wine onto my white sweater while remaining passed out. When they found me they did the only thing they could - pull my shirt off me, carry my ass to the bathroom and lay me on the floor. This would prove to be the start of something golden. To this day, if the stories told the next day don't end up with me sleeping on the bathroom floor, then I wasn't really that drunk. Kelly did her best to get me to sleep in a bed and also to put a shirt on, but I wasn't having it. I liked the floor and I wasn't moving, so instead she laid a clean shirt on top of me like a blanket and left me there to sleep it off. Around 7:00 a.m. I was awoken by TupperDoug, who had come to collect me before sneaking out.

It was now Christmas Eve, and by tradition we were all expected at my (real) aunt and uncle's place mid-afternoon for a ham dinner and to sing "Happy Birthday" to Jesus (really) before heading off to church (another fond childhood memory - before church started they would hand out little white candles for us to light and hold up at the end of the service when everyone sang Christmas hymns by candlelight. All the kids in my family would spend the entire church service warming the candles in our hands and between our knees to soften them up so we could bend them into odd shapes. One time my cousin Bryan managed to tie his candle in a knot). Upon arrival the five of us who'd been involved in the prior evening's festivities looked one another over and I have to tell you, we looked like shit. We felt even worse and the idea of ham or food of any kind was simply nauseating. But as much as we all wanted to die, there was a sparkle in the eyes of all of us as co-conspirators of what would become the Legendary Night of Christmas Eve Eve.

KELLY, DOUG, SIMONE and anyone else who was there and happens to read this: PLEASE leave your memories of this night in the comments. I know we will never be able to give a complete picture of the awesomeness to anyone who wasn't there but damn it, we can try.

Nostalgia And Shit Like That.

When I was growing up, my family liked to play board games at Christmas. It started out with the adults while us kids were busy having a wrestling match with cheap-ass plastic and its tag-team partner gravity. When we outgrew that frustration we joined them. The first one I remember playing is Pictionary, which I hated because to this day I can barely color inside the lines, let alone draw something freehand and have it be recognizable. I also remember quite a bit of Trivial Pursuit, although in my family there was nothing trivial about it - we were pretty fucking serious about wanting to win, and by "win" I mean beat my dad.

By far the most popular game we ever played and the one that dominates my memories was Crack the Case. My parents got it for my brother as a gift one year and the entire extended family decided to test it out after dinner. We were instantly hooked. Nevermind that we didn't even play it right. Almost immediately we stopped keeping score and just played it until we felt like stopping, no small feat considering the disturbing amount of competitive spirit that myself, my father AND my brother all carry around to this day (remind me to tell you how I'm "winning" at sex right now). Crack the Case worked like this: one person would pick a card out of a pile. There were three piles to choose from: Easy, Medium, and Hard. Over time as we got good at it we started disregarding the Easy cards almost entirely. On the front of the card would be a "case" - some mystery, usually a suspicious dead body, and a handful of details about the environment or circumstances the body was found in. The back of the card had all the details about what had happened. The goal was to solve the case: Who killed this person, how and why? The more difficult cards had either less initial information, or the information given was misleading. I remember one time spending several hours and no small amount of frustration on a case where the card read, "A woman has died. On the ground is a puddle of water and a hat. Who killed her, how did they do it and what was the reason?"* The trick to the thing was that you were only allowed to ask the person reading the card yes or no questions. It was like do-it-yourself CSI before there was any such show as CSI. Everybody stayed at the table and played. If sitting around playing board games as a family sounds completely dorktastic, that's because it is. Except that it wasn't. The game has been out of print for years, so good luck finding it, but if you do, I defy you to sit down with your family and play this game without thinking it is the most fun and addictive thing you've ever done with your family (unless your family sits around having "family heroin time", which would be more addictive, though I dare say it's probably not nearly as fun, at least after a while).

I made the decision several years ago not to spend any more holidays with my family and I can't say I regret it. I've grown very attached to the freedom of not having anything expected of me. I don't have anywhere I'm supposed to be at any certain time. There is no dress code. I don't have to get dressed at all if I want. If I wake up that morning and decide "You know what? Fuck ham. I don't feel like cooking. Imma eat candy all fucking day and no one can stop me", I can sit there with a massive bowl of M&Ms in my paint splatter sweatpants watching "A Christmas Story" 16 times in a row and never take a shower. Of course I would never actually do that because OHMIGOD YOU GUYS, Christmas is so TOTALLY, like, my FAVORITE as by now you all know (and if somehow you've missed this piece of information about me, I'd like to take this opportunity to tell you that my living room is currently a forest of Christmas trees. Seven of them). Also, ham is awesome.When people ask "What are you doing for Christmas?" I have to restrain myself from saying "WHATEVER THE FUCK I WANT! SUCK ON THAT, BITCH!" and making their trip to rural Indiana to see their crazy aunt that farts at the table and their racist grandparents seem like purgatory. But the one thing that I do always miss this time of year is that time right after dessert when someone would go to the cupboard and pull out Crack the Case.

*Cap, Bry, Simmy and Kelly: Who remembers this case? We seriously spent like two hours on it. Bonus points for the first person to comment with the answer.

Brotherly Love

I had lunch with my brother today.

Cap: Ok, see you. Be good.

Me: Yeah, see you soon. (pause) I'm not going to be good.

Cap: Oh, ok. Well go fuck yourself then.

You Can Never Go Home Again Oatman! But I Guess You Can Shop There.

Look, I don't mean to sit around trash talking my hometown, but Cleveland has a way of being a soul-crushing vortex of despair even when you are having a good time.

Saturday I embarked on a trip to Cleveland that I have not made in years, after a tag team attack from Mrs. Sizemore and my stepmother - apparently my father and brother continue to live in a magical fantasy land where I am not only a valuable member of the family but also fun to be around and therefore they miss me. I know right? Inexplicable. Regardless, Saturday I flew to Cleveland so they could see me.

The trip itself probably deserves its own story. I was up at the ass-crack of dawn so that I could catch an orange line train down to Midway in time for a pre 9:00 a.m. flight. The bartender, fresh off a Christmas night shift at the bar, tells me that this is ridiculous and as long as he's up he'll just give me a ride. Which seemed like a nice gesture until I realized that this meant a half an hour of driving through snow to the south side, all the while listening to him complain about how he fucking hates going to Midway and that it would take him forever to get back home in all that snow because every other driver on the road had turned stupid. So sorry to have inconvenienced him with my not asking him to take me anywhere at all. This has the added effect of getting me there fully three hours in advance of my 50 minute long flight.

The earliness of my arrival actually turned out to be a good thing, as I tried to go through security with red and white striped hair and a shirt that read "All Bets on Death" on the day after some douche tried to blow up a plane in Detroit (seriously Detroit? WHO DID HE THINK WOULD CARE?). On top of that I had one of Mrs. Sizemore's Christmas gifts in my bag - a Magic Cheezburger, which I unbelievably forgot had a tiny amount of liquid sealed inside it so the little phrase thingy could float around. I can't really blame them: it would have been obvious to anyone that I was a terrorist, what with my attention calling hair, fake sandwich/bomb that I didn't even try to hide and the announcing of my intention to die on my shirt. Besides, I'd be lying if I said the attentions of the TSA screener who felt me up didn't leave me feeling a bit frisky. You caught me. I liked it.

While waiting (and waiting and waiting) for it to be time for my flight, my attention was caught by the recently updated automated announcement system, which now includes instructions on basic hygiene such as: Cover you face with a tissue if you cough or sneeze! and Wash your hands...with soap! They actually said that "with soap". And I started having the thought that geez, do people REALLY need to be told to use so- ...and then cut myself off as I realized that yes, sadly, they really do.

The flight itself was pretty uneventful, except for my realization that despite knowing intellectually that I live next to a cluster of some of the largest fresh water lakes on the entire planet, I fail to grasp their vastness until I am in a plane flying over them and I still can't see the shore on any side. Fuckers are just absolutely massive.

Cleveland Hopkins International Airport smells like cinnamon rolls and mediocrity. It has been perpetually under construction since before I was born and despite this, looks exactly the same as it did 30 years ago. Oh, with the exception of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Store they have in there now. I laughed out loud like the crazy woman I am when I saw it. The concept is brilliant: buy souvenirs for your friends and relatives from the one and only interesting thing worth seeing in the entire city without ever having to actually go there and see it! It's fucking genius and underscores my longstanding argument that American ingenuity does not stem from the question "How can we make the world better?" but from the question "How can we make it so that we can be as lazy as possible and put no effort into anything, ever?" IMMD.

The triumphant return of the prodigal daughter was just as I expected. My dad cried, I ate pie, and mysteries were solved. Apparently Mrs. Sizemore and RLC didn't plan their ruse for getting me very well, and Cap was highly confused when Mrs. Sizemore started panicking that she and RLC were not ready at 11:00 to "go get doughnuts". Following that, as is traditional in my family, everyone settled into their own room doing their own activities by themselves, thereby negating the entire point of "getting together". It was quietly hilarious.

Later we drove out to visit Simmy and a very surprised and confused Kelly (I'd called and left her a message that Cap and I wanted to get together on Mrs. Sizemore's assertion that Kelly knew I was in town. She didn't). The highlight was my little niece who not only knows that a screwdriver will remove the panel on her cash register so the batteries can be changed, but can tell a Flathead screw from a Phillips-head and select the appropriate tool. She's two years old.

After a dinner out with my parents where I made a complete ass of myself trying to order a bowl of soup, we retired to the house where Cap, Mrs. Sizemore and my dad engaged me in several rounds of Smart Ass, one of which I won. This was a really huge deal: Mrs. Sizemore and her giant brain packed full of crap had apparently won every single round of Smart Ass that had been played since Thanksgiving. I was the hero of the day. They threw me a ticker tape parade and had my name written in the sky by an airplane (OK, really they just said "haha" and pointed at Mrs. Sizemore and I poured myself a glass of Amaretto).

The fun continued when us three kids met up with Kelly, her beau and some other graduates of our high school at a bar. Of this I have little memory, but the photos in my camera assure me that I had an excellent time. Per usual, I took notes that turned out to be mostly useless:

• "R.T. Story" - I know what this one means. R.T. stands for "rubber twat" and is indeed a great story, however it is not my story so if you want to hear it, you'll have to pester Cap.
• "White supremacist ass crack" - I also remember this one. While we were merrily drinking at the bar a short, fat man with a shaved head and white supremacist tattoos all over it walked in and bellied up to the bar. We noticed him and were afraid, but as we were all white and out of his line of sight we soon forgot he was there. Until someone (Kelly?) happened to glance over and notice that his pants were falling off. Like, a lot falling off. His jeans were nearly to his knees and his gray boxer briefs were just above balls level. I can't believe he wouldn't have noticed a breeze across such a large amount of exposed ham hock. Being very drunk by then, we fumbled conspicuously for cameras and may have been talking about it much louder than we intended, but we manged to get our shots without being shot by him or his friend.
• "Tai's face (the photos that are the same)" - In my camera is a series of photos where various people are holding their hand out in front of their face and appear to be either angry or singing opera. I am assuming these are the photos this note refers to, but I fail to recall what the fuck I was talking about.
• "Jenny, how do you make it happen?" and "cap & cow (ask Kelly)" - These are some of the last notes I wrote and I haven't got any idea what the could possibly mean, though I seemed to place a great deal of importance on remembering the second one because I've written it very carefully in even better handwriting than I have when I'm sober.

There is another separate set of notes from when I polled everyone at the table about what my next hair cut and/or color should be. Most of the suggestions are as would be expected for my head: "Jet black with platinum and Burgundy highlights cut to the chin", "Burgundy or eggplant", "Pink and black/ jagged", "Green and rich yellow", "Black with silver, jagged (not curly)", except for my brother's vote which says far more about the speaker than it does about me. I quoted him directly: "Put it back to the color it's supposed to be. I want you to look like Ann Coulter is your friend."

All in all, I had a really great time, including watching the Browns win their third game in a row (the hell?) before going to the airport on Sunday. Which is why I was so startled by the overwhelming sense of joy and relief I had upon landing back in Chicago. I can only conclude that it is the flat and colorless expanse of Cleveland itself that produces the feelings of hopelessness and despair I get every time I go there.

Happy Fakesgiving!

Fakesgiving dinner* is always better when it follows that whore Ann Arbor taking it in the ass for the 6th year in a row.

In only slightly related news, given that Thanksgiving falls in the middle of the 40 Days I have decided to start calling it Practice Christmas.


*Fakesgiving is an invention of Mrs. Sizemore and Fancy. It is basically Thanksgiving with friends instead of family because friends are the family you choose.

M-I Crooked Letter Crooked Letter O-U-R-I

I will shortly be hopping a train back to the Lou in order to be at Cap and Mrs. Sizemore's place in time for Ohio State/Michigan football and Fakesgiving tomorrow. And then on Sunday there is Christmas decorating to be done. YYYEEEESSSSSSSS.