Accidental Southern Belle

In case you were wondering...

Hello Darling Blog Readers. I know that it is either very exciting or very disappointing that all I do here these days is post links to thinks I think are funny. For me, it is exciting, I think it would be for you unless you actually WANTED (for some reason) to know what I am thinking about or interested in. Ahh...the navel gazing...it is no longer interesting to me.

Is that something about turning thirty? Am I complacent? I think actually I am sort of bored by the public nature of the internet.  Being that my life is completely exposed on Facebook to the point that if someone writes something personal or of ACTUAL interest on my "wall" I rush to take it down so the work contacts that are connected to me aren't offended. Plus, I am supposed to keep up a stream of interesting factoids on Twitter. But what if one day (or every day) I lack factoids?! Then it is as if I do not exist at all.

So, I think the blog will continue for now to be a repository for things I think (and therefore think you will think) are funny. I wish I could post a link to this segment they replayed on Howard Stern this AM of a garbage man talking about how he knows what ethnicity someone is based on their garbage. The Jews apparently drink a lot of Kedem grape juice...just in case you were worried.

In case your heart needed a little warming...you'll be happy to know that Simon and Garfunkel briefly reunited at the reopening of the Beacon Theater. I love the Beacon.(AG comes out at the 2:00 mark of this video).

The Multi-State Outfit

Was walking into town today to work on my book (see how that's going...) and realized that I bought the shoes I'm wearing in Nashville, the jeans in Missouri, the sweater in Chattanooga, the coat in New York and the scarf in Jerusalem.  Only the bag I was carrying my computer in was purchased here in Virginia.

And then I bought a red coat for $50. Which is kind of the best thing that's ever happened to me. I've always wanted a red coat. And now I have one. W-hoo!!!! :)

That's all I have to tell you. Sorry. If something better comes up, I'll be sure to post it here.

Am a bit worried about myself...

Because I have this little game now called Animal Crossing. It is a silly game where you sell fruit and fish in rivers. You decorate your house. You buy little outfits. You send letters to horses named Winnie and ducks named Miranda. And they send you presents. AND YET I CAN NOT STOP THINKING ABOUT IT. All I want to do is play this ridiculous game. I am literally considering taking a VACATION DAY FROM WORK to play it all day long.

Now, this has happened to me before...I have been addicted to Sim City a few times...secretly a few years ago I also was very addicted to The Sims. (Arianna Huffington says you should blog about your secret passions--now you know how truly nerdy I am...) But it's especially bad this time....mostly because MATTHEW KNOWS HOW MUCH I PLAY THIS GAME. And I am embarassed.

The other thing is that I know I won't be able to play for a week when I am in New York because there is memory of what I've done in the game on my Wii and I don't want to start over. AND I AM WORRIED ABOUT THAT. Isn't that frightening?!

But I can't stop...and I don't really want to...so I think I will just keep playing until the fun wears out...usually it takes about a month.

It's official: I am high maintenance

When I was in 9th grade, give or take a year, I had bangs. They required an ENORMOUS amount of work. Every morning, I had to sit at my golden vanity (I had one, stop laughing, it was my dream) and use a round brush, a hair dryer on high and a LOT OF HAIR SPRAY to make the bangs straight and the hair curly. Let's just say: I was truly hideous. The braces, the frizz, the poof. Horrible.

At some point, I brilliantly got rid of the bangs and swore them off for life. UNTIL NOW. You would have thought I would have learned my lesson but then the other day on the way to the hair cutter, I said "Maybe I'll get bangs. Long bangs." And Matt said he thought it was a good idea. AND THEN I TOLD CANDACE THE HAIR DRESSER THE SAME THING.

Only AFTER she cut them off did she reveal that I was going to have to go back to my old ways. Only now it's with a wide toothed comb instead of a round brush and a curl enhancer instead of Rave hairspray in the pump bottle.

So, now, I am high maintenance. I have a hair dryer with me on vacatoin. I worry all day long about the state of my bangs--are they curling?! No water may come within a 2 mile radius of me. Godforbid it should rain. But it is the same situation. They are a kind of side swipe bang not a forehead coverer. I am possibly hipper. I'm not sure. But I am completely sure that it now takes me TWENTY MINUTES to get out of the bathroom in the morning when it used to take 10. Very distressing.

So, that is the current state of affairs. Tomorrow we drive over the swollen Mississippi to Missouri. I'm picturing Oregon Trail when you have to float the wagon. Stay tuned! You might even get a PHOTO of the new do if you're good.

Pros and Cons of Electronic Workouts

So, we got a Wii Fit and it is super fun to play with (yoga! pushups! step aerobics! a thing where it makes you look like a penguin and you have to catch fish!), but I have a sinking suspicion that it will not actually help anyone loose weight. Well, maybe if you ate 4 chickens a day and then you stood up once in a while on the Wii Balance Board. BUT I don't think that if you are a mildly active person (which, apparently I am--completely against my will--I see these super skinny women at the gym and they make me mad not because they are skinnier than me but if I was naturally skinny, I would NEVER EVER EXERCISE.)

What it WILL do is guilt you into doing other exercise and eating better because every day that you get on it, it tells you how much you weigh and how much in TENTHS OF A POUND you weigh more or less than the last time you got on. And THEN it tells you that your weight can fluctuate up to 2 pounds within a day SO even if you weigh FOUR TENTHS OF A POUND less than you did before, it will negate it and make you continue to feel horrible about yourself. Since you never lose weight no matter how many mind-blowingly hard step classes you go to. (Oh wait, that's me, not you.)

ASB, you are thinking, why are you so obsessed with this (is it healthier to obsess about four tenths of a pound than your fading dreams of being a published writer...). And I will tell you that I don't know (although clearly it has something to do with the last parenthetical). BUT, I am. This does not, however, cause me to eat better or drink less. SO clearly I'm not able to translate the mental obsession into actual action. And if someone could figure out a way to make THAT into a video game, then they would be rich.

I have a suspicion that my nose has grown

I'm not sure if this is possible, but I've had a suspicion for a few months that my nose has gotten bigger. Not like exploded bigger, but just, a little bit (perceptibly) bigger.

I'm kind of upset about it...as I actually really liked my nose pre-growth, it was a good size and shape. But now it seems honking to me, a few millimeters of nose growth can really affect the symmetry of the thing.

I've been told that as you get older, your nose and ears continue to grow which is VERY UPSETTING. Not only does your metabolism slow down, but your body just becomes more and more out of proportion. This is very, very upsetting.

Amazing Day

Most of the time I am angry and morose on this blog, but yesterday was piles of fun. My observation went well, I was introduced to this hilarious unicorn show that I will post below, Hannah and I ate delicious Indian food for lunch, workshop was a hoot, dinner with my favorite writer AND THEN WE PLAYED DOMINOES AT THE BAR. BRILLIANT!!!!! It was literally perfect. Unbeatable, really. So to make YOUR day good, here is the Planet Unicorn show:

The Weekly 5AM Worry

So, it's 5AM on Saturday morning and I am wide awake. I am worrying about the following, not necessarily in this order:

-that my book is veering out of control in a very bad way

-that the Ecotone blog needs to get more traffic and/or postings on our current them the Body as Ecotone

-the peanuts I ate before I went to sleep

-that I need to meet with my film prof about my HORRIBLE screenplay (or should I even be caring about this right now)

-that I shouldn't have assigned "Church Camp" from A Girl Named Zippy to my students (oh wait, it's from She Got Up Off the Couch)

-that if I don't back up my computer soon, all of my data will be lost in a horrible crash (does this external hard drive seem good?)

That's not to mention that I am being observed for teaching next week.

Now back to your own regularly scheduled worrying program.

Halloween Party

So, I'm not going to lie, my Halloween  costume (Jackie Kennedy) was pretty good this year:

And Joel's (Jonbenet Ramsey) wasn't bad either:

Nor was Ashley's:

I will miss the MFA Halloween reading next year.

And since this is my blog and I can be egomaniacal, this is the full-on costume, without glasses, note the gloves, the straight hair and the fabulous shoes provided by Ashley's roommate:

Brain malfunctions left and right

My brain was seriously addled this weekend during the MFA Exam, I can't even think to go back and look at what I wrote.

Evidence: On Saturday, I left my house at noon to go to the library. On the way, my gas light went on. I drove toward school with the intention of getting gas, and all the gas stations had something wrong with them--a line of cars in front of their entrance, yellow bags over their pumps, no credit card thing-y on the pump. So when I finally TURN AROUND to go back to the one that had a line in front of it to see if the line had gone away, I realized: NO WALLET. I had to go all the way home, LEAVE THE CAR RUNNING in front of the house (because in my brain fog, I believe that stopping and re-starting the car will cause me to use up too much gas), go inside to get the wallet and then hope and pray I wouldn't run out of gas before I got back to the station. Luckily, I made it. But that was silly.

Second evidence: This morning, I got to my class at 9 AM, ready to lead a workshop. Except I had no ability to speak and NO PEN. How could I leave my home without a pen? I apologized for the incoherence of speech--but the pen?! Disaster.

I really hope I didn't mis-spell my name on the exam or something truly embarassing of that nature.