tidbits

A few things:

-Switzerland went well. I remember more French than I thought, which was completely useless in Zurich, where everyone spoke German. J promised that we can learn German together. He's got some tapes. But I actually spent most of the trip in Geneva, where French is the norm. I ate truffles for the first time, and also some cheese that completely reinforced the origins of the question "who cut the cheese?!" I brought back Toblerone, and Swiss Army Knives made of chocolate. And a windchime (it had a nice sound; I prefer unusual souvenirs).

-I am a pushover. Got a call from a recruiter today and he probably could have gotten me to tell him my weight if he'd asked. Nevermind that I am not at all interested in looking for another job right now. He was dangling offers of a position with more responsibility; I was frank and said that was something I wasn't necessarily looking for more of at the moment.

-Our mortgage was approved. So was the mortgage of the folks who are buying our house. 2 weeks to wooded bliss! Free pizza and beer if you help us unload the trucks :)

it's a go!

I'm happy to announce that we are on track to move to the woods next month! The sale of our current house is all lined up, and our offer has been accepted on the new house. We are trying to finalize the closing date--we are hoping to get 4 weeks but we may have to be out of here as early as 2 weeks from now. Here are some pictures of the new place.

The front:

The back:

Living/Dining room:

Room adjacent to kitchen, overlooking our 13 acres of woods:

Obviously, that's not our stuff in the house (it's actually vacant now but those pics were from the listing). I can't wait to be there in spring when all the flowering trees bloom, and of course in fall, when we will have an awesome view of our very own New England foliage.

chocolate and cheese and giant knives with lots of blades and things

One of the perks of my job is that I sometimes get to travel to neat cities and stay in very nice hotels. For the first time in the 3 years that I've been in this profession, I am finally being sent overseas for a work trip! Destination: Switzerland.

Although I love to travel, I'm a little nervous because I have to fly into one city, and then take the train to another city and then a cab to my hotel...all by myself. Here's the problem--how do you know what language any given person in Switzerland speaks? German and French are 2 of the official languages, Italian is another. English is not. Luckily, at one point in my life, I was nearly fluent in French. Here's why I hesitate to rely on my French: when faced with the fact that I will have to navigate the Swiss train system on my own, I tried to think of the French word for "train". For the life of me, I could not remember it. I looked it up online. It is "train".

I know I should not be nervous...in fact, I already know I will have 100 times more confidence than that day almost exactly 12 years ago, when I arrived in Paris--alone--to spend a semester living there. It was a crisp early morning in January, and I was still recovering from New Year's Eve. I had 6 months worth of clothes (mostly black and grey so I could fit in with the Parisians). I got into a cab and tried to pronounce the address of my apartment...knowing I would butcher it I simultaneously handed the cabbie a scrap of paper where I had written it down. I was tired, and nervous, and so excited. I'd never lived in an apartment before, and here I was, about to do it, in PARIS! We finally pulled up at the building. It was so "French". I was delighted. Then I met the concierge, who gave me the nastiest look as I tried desperately to explain to her who I was. Of course she spoke absolutely no English (or maybe she was just pretending)...I remember distinctly trying to carefully pronounce "Je suis une etudiante Americaine..." (as if she would not immediately realize I was an American...the French can *smell* us, I am convinced). After much deliberation, she finally handed me a key and showed me to the apartment--through 2 courtyards and up 5 or 6 flights of stairs. Did I mention I had 6 months worth of things with me? I spent that first day wandering the neighborhood. I think I even went into a store that sold phones because I couldn't figure out how to use the payphone to call home with my calling card. My roommate (and now best girlfriend) SV showed up the next day, so we tackled the rest of the basic necessities together, but I will never forget the nervous, exhausted, exhilaration I felt that first day alone in Paris.

Well, that was an unexpected stream of conciousness. I honestly didn't sit down intending to write about that. But you know what, I feel much better about showing up alone in Switzerland now! J, I wish you could be there with me. I swear I will get your ass to Europe before I turn too much more of your hair gray.

So anyway, have any of you been to Switzerland? In what language do I need to ask for my 4-foot Toblerone and Giant Swiss Army Knife? Should I ask people, in French, if they speak English? I hate to be the ignoramous who just starts rambling in English in a foreign country as if everyone is supposed to understand it. And on a serious note, if you have any recommendations for Must-See things in Zurich or Geneva (keeping in mind I'll only have 1 day in each city), I'm all ears!

an update

for those who may be wondering:

We are hoping to really start buttoning things up with the house deal sometime this weekend. Basically, if you haven't done it before, the sale of a house involves several steps--and until the "closing" is complete, your house isn't really sold. We made it through the first step, which was the home inspection. The buyers looked over the report and decided not to ask us to fix anything (which is good, because we pretty much told them, "look, we're giving you a great price, but you're getting the place as-is". The next step is the appraisal. In our case, our buyers are getting a government loan, so there are some contingencies in place that you may not have to deal with in the case of a conventional loan. Because the government is granting the loan, they want to make sure there are no major problems with the property before they approve the loan. We had to sign a statement agreeing that our buyers had the right to walk away from the deal if the house does not appraise for at or above the sale price. In addition, the government may require certain repairs to be made before they'll approve the loan. So right now, we are simply waiting to hear the results of the appraisal that was done last weekend. We were hoping to have heard earlier this week, but the process is taking longer than we expected.

Once we get the news on the appraisal (assuming all is good), we will move forward at blazing speed in terms of getting a contract together on the house we want to buy. (Lever, it's not in Maine! It's still here in CT, about 45 minutes from where we live now).

So keep your fingers crossed for us (or, if you're Catholic, pray to that wacky St. Joseph guy). Here's hoping I have another--more exciting--update within a few days...

just needs the old John Hancocks...

Looks like we're finally selling our house :) By February I could be hiking in my own 13 acres of woods...

RIP: James Brown

Dear Godfather of Soul, even though you had some "issues" with domestic violence, your contribution to the American music landscape will be remembered always.

James Brown has now been added to my husband's running tally of musicians I have seen in concert that died shortly after I attended their concerts. Other names on this list include:

-Stevie Ray Vaughan (I was at his last concert; that night he died when his helicopter crashed into the ski hill at Alpine Valley)
-Jerry Garcia (I was at the last Grateful Dead show)
-Lou Rawls (died within a few months of us seeing him perform at Mohegan Sun Casino)

We saw James Brown maybe 3 years ago, so I'm thinking I'm not connected to his death. You may also note that Bob Dylan, Jon Bon Jovi, Crosby/Stills/Nash/Young, Ronnie James Dio, Vince Neil, and Eric Clapton are all still alive, despite my having seen them in concert, some of these as many as 15 years ago!

However, if it is true that I can kill artists merely by attending their concerts, I will need tickets to the following shows immediately: Clay Aiken, Nelly Furtado, Aaron Neville (who I already saw once but apparently my death mojo wasn't working that night), Paris Hilton, Toby Keith, Celine Dion...

Have great sex, help change the world

This year, I've vowed to mark the Winter Solstice with some sort of ritual. So, there I was, looking for ideas online, when I came across the GlobalOrgasm website. That's right, these folks want people across the globe to participate in a massive "synchronized global orgasm", at the time of the upcoming Winter Solstice (Dec 22). During and after orgasm, participants are asked to concentrate their thoughts on world peace. The idea is to create a huge surge of positive human energy in an effort to combat the high levels of aggression and violence present around the world today. I'll be the first to admit that the science behind the GlobalOrgasm project is certainly less than solid, but I'm happy to be a guinea pig in this experiment. See their blog for more.

PMS Book Review

I just finished this wonderful book:

And now, because I have PMS, I am totally choked up and sad and happy all at once. Actually, the book was so good that I probably would have cried regardless of the PMS...but that's enough talk about PMS.

"The Time Traveler's Wife", by Audrey Niffenegger, is a beautiful, crushing, uplifting, artistic, heart-rending tale of true love, with a highly original science-fiction twist. I can barely write any more about it as I am starting to get that "about-to-cry" headache again. All I can say is, read this book. You won't regret it (unless you also have PMS when you get to the end, in which case you may end up sobbing into a box of double-stuff oreos while wondering who would play Henry when the book is made into a movie and whether you would get to see him naked or not, and whether or not you would even want to, depending on how the filmmakers decide to handle the ending).

Merry Christmahannukwaanzaka to you!

With the house situation still in limbo, I've distracted myself with holiday decorating. I wasn't particularly eager to do it this year, having been enjoying the relative sparseness of a staged-for-sale home.

I should mention here that if it were possible to make a living in the clutter production trade, J would be CEO of the world's largest clutter-producing corporation. We can go from "showing-perfect" to "just-ransacked" in a matter of seconds. I keep trying to come up with creative organizational strategies that will help J reduce his clutter output, but haven't been completely successful. In an effort to eliminate his sea of post-its and torn scraps of paper (covered with phone numbers, website addresses, concert dates, movies to watch, CDs to buy, random calculations, etc), I bought him a PDA. The inside cover of the PDA is now covered with post-its. You see what I'm up against.

To get back on track, it's beginning to look pretty festive at our house. Which brings me to my next point. According to this article:

Americans are ready to put "Merry Christmas" back into holiday shopping, a new poll shows.

The majority of Americans surveyed - 95% - said they were not offended by a "Merry Christmas" greeting in stores, according to a poll by Zogby International.

However, 32% of respondents said they took offense at "Happy Holidays," the religiously neutral alternative promoted over the last few years as inclusive and inoffensive.

I actually take the Zogby polls, and I happened to take this one. I was among the 95% of Americans who is not offended by having a store clerk (or anyone for that matter) wish me a "Merry Christmas." Interestingly, the poll results confirmed a general sense I was getting, which was that my saying "Happy Holidays" is actually considered offensive by quite a few people. Yes, I celebrate Christmas, in the sense that I gather with family for food and the exchanging of gifts on Christmas day. But I am not actually celebrating Christmas as in celebrating the birth of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

In fact, for me the Winter Solstice will probably be the most spiritual day of the holiday season. Humans were celebrating during the yuletide season long before Christ was born, and it's not like I have to remind any of you where the vast majority of so-called Christmas decorations originated.

But back to the point. If you are a Christian and want to wish others a "Merry Christmas," by all means, go right ahead. By the same token, allow those of us who don't quite agree that "Jesus is the reason for the season", to wish you "Happy Holidays", without taking it as some sort of slam on Christianity. When I wish someone "Happy Holidays", it is because I sincerely hope that they will be able to spend happy times with friends and loved ones during the coming weeks, sharing in whatever traditions they choose to celebrate with each other. I fear that too many people, when they say "Merry Christmas", are really saying "Screw you, liberal heathens"...which I'm fairly sure was the real emotion behind the "tell the ACLU 'Merry Christmas'" scheme. (The ACLU has never filed any kind of anti-'Merry Christmas' lawsuit, by the way.)

So, how do I express myself this holiday season without offending? "Happy Holidays" is obviously risky, and "Happy Winter Solstice"--if the recipient even understands what that means--is just too new-agey and pagan for my taste. I think I'm going to follow J's lead and go with a good old "Happy Festivus".

another house update: thanks Ned Flanders?

So, we got an offer on the house this weekend. It was pretty low. We're in the midst of negotiations. We want everything to work out but we also don't want to give away our house for a steal.

Thank god I'm not buying a house by myself--I would be a total pushover. J tends more heavily toward stubborness, so I think we balance each other out well.

Hopefully all this will be a done deal soon!

buy our motherf***ing house

So here's the latest: we have a contract signed on our dream house, contingent upon the sale of our current home. We have even had the "new" house inspected, to the tune of about $700. So now there's more than potential disappointment on the line--we're talking cash here!

We had somebody come look at our house last week. Apparently they've now narrowed their search down to 2 or 3 homes, of which ours is one. They are coming back to see it again this weekend. A very good sign. Someone new is also supposed to be coming to take a look at the place tomorrow. So we are poised for things to move forward. I just knew that burying that Ned Flanders figurine in the houseplant would be the solution! I never did say anything special when I buried it, so let me make a public attempt here and now:

Hi-diddly-ho there, prospective home buyers! This charming cape has much to offer. Newly refinished wood flooring, a cheerful color scheme, lots of natural lighting, and the back closet barely smells like dead mouse anymore. Just about every room in the house has been blessed via Bacchanalian ritual, and you'll enjoy sorting through all the crap that we plan on leaving in the basement. And just so you know, we've never had any problems from the neighbors or from the previous owner, who died in the driveway. You won't mind if we dig up a few of the plants before we leave, will you? Okely-dokely then, do we have a deal?

the midwestern indoctrination continues

This year J was lucky enough to get the week of Thanksgiving off from work, so we road-tripped it from the east coast all the way back to Illinois to spend the week with my family. J is a brave man. Now, I've taken him back to my homeland before, so he knows all about the flatness, and the corn, and did I mention the flatness? This time he was lucky enough to be able to spend some time in downtown Chicago, but there was still something missing from his midwestern experience: he had never eaten at Steak & Shake.

What better meal to have the night before Thanksgiving than a big old Steak & Shake Frisco melt (the platter, of course) and a giant sippable sundae shake? That's what we thought, too.

After ravenously devouring everything on our table, we sat back to reflect on the experience. J turned to me and said, patting his belly, "Ugh, I feel like an engorged tick!"

My mother's jaw dropped open, and she fixed her eyes on us. "WHAT did he just say?!"

"Tick, mom, with a 'T'! He said he feels like an engorged TICK."

(P.S. You may have noticed the new look of the blog, and the new title. This is because I switched over to Blogger beta where I can actually understand what I'm doing when I edit the blog. Hope you don't mind the changes, but I bore easily. It's a wonder I kept it the same for so long!)

tidbits

ONE
It's on its way...my new Macbook Pro, that is! If pigs in shit are really as happy as we're made to think, then call me Porky and roll me in a cow pattie. I've used Macs in the past, but never for personal use, so I am beyond excited.

TWO
We have made an offer on a house (contigent upon the sale of our house, though luckily the sellers are being nice enough to give us plenty of time; that wouldn't stop them, however, from taking another offer if it came along). But anyway, we are signing the official contract on Thursday. It's a rockin' house, a 1978 contemporary on 13.5 wooded acres. We're very excited about it, but I'm maintaining a realistic perspective. The market for selling our house is terrible, and a major employer just announced it was leaving our town. So things aren't poised to improve anytime soon. In lieu of burying a statue of St. Joseph upside down in the yard, I plan to devise a similar ritual involving a small, plastic Ned Flanders figurine...

THREE
To Jennifer: You commented recently asking what we went to Belize for, and I tried to reply to your comment but Blogger was being screwy and it didn't take and I was too lazy to get around to it again. But what I wanted to say was that more stories and pictures from this Belize trip are forthcoming, pending the arrival of the Macbook, but that in the meantime, I thought you might be most interested in something we did there last year. We visited a cave called Actun Tunichil Muknal (Cave of the Crystal Sepulchre). To enter the cave, you must swim about 100 ft, and you remain in water ranging from ankle- to chest-deep for about 80% of the tour. There are no guardrails, no installed lighting. When you get to the part with the artifacts (after climbing a large, near-vertical ladder and squiggling your way through some pretty small tunnel-like areas), you walk in your socks and are careful not to step on pottery fragments. Or areas of crystallized bone. Visitors won't be able to experience the cave like this for long. It was an amazing experience!

my first time (you betta Belize it!)

When we visited Belize for the first time last year, I was aware of its stature as one of the world's top sites for scuba diving. But with all the time and expense involved with planning a wedding, I wasn't able to get dive certified in time for the trip (J has been certified for years). Turned out not to matter too much--we stayed on an island where good snorkeling could be had right off the beach, and J had a cold and wouldn't have been able to dive anyhow.

But when we decided to return to Belize earlier this year, I was determined to be able to dive there and see what all the fuss was about. I completed the first half of a PADI Open Water Diver course (classroom and pool sessions) in one weekend here in CT. While the rest of the suckers in my class would complete the open water portion of the certification in a Pennsylvania quarry, I headed down to the warm waters of Belize, referral in hand.

To complete my Open Water Diver certification, I would have to do 4 dives in 2 days. When we arrived on Caye Caulker, we stopped by the Belize Diving Service office to shore up our plans for the next day's dives. The weather had been overcast and rainy since we'd been in Belize, but we were told that they'd probably still be going out the next day, and to show up around 9 am.

The next morning, I was nervous. Diving sounded like a lot of fun, and I was excited to explore life under the sea, but it's an activity not without its very real dangers. On top of that, my anxiety was increased because of the fact that I had lied about one small item on my medical form, and had been advised not to dive by my neurologist but decided to take my chances (I'll save the details for another post, but in the meantime don't be alarmed...it's a migraine-related problem).

So anyway, having demonstrated that I knew how to assemble my gear, we (me, some other referral students, as well as a group of certified divers) got on the boat and headed off to the Hol Chan Marine Reserve, about a 40 minute boat ride. The sky was still darkish, and there was intermittent rain. The water was choppy, and most everyone on the boat was keeping an eye on the horizon in an effort to ward off seasickness. Until recently, I have been immune to any kind of motion sickness. Maybe it's related to the onset of the migraine problem, but I've noticed that I'm a bit more sensitive to it these days. So needless to say, I was trying really hard to hold it together on the boat. I'd been assured that any seasickness would disappear once I got under the water, so I geared up and fell backwards over the side of the boat, ready for my first dive experience.

We descended slowly, but the abundance of the sea life was immediately apparent. Fish were everywhere, we didn't have to go very deep to see beautiful coral formations, and we even saw a group of nurse sharks. The problem was, I still felt pretty damned queasy. I had not been instructed on the finer points of retching underwater while trying to breathe from a tank, and I really didn't want to find out how well that would work. I breathed as calmly and steadily as possible, and tried to enjoy my first dive.

After about 35 minutes, we made our way to the surface, and within seconds of my head hitting air, the contents of my stomach were being gobbled up by a group of fish who had quickly found their way to my special floating buffet. J came up below me, so he got a nice view of this scene. A few more hurls in the rough water, and I got back into the boat. We had to wait an hour before diving again, an hour which I spent sitting silently, trying to calm my stomach. After one more fish-feeding session over the side of the boat, it was time to dive again. I felt better during the second dive than during the first, but once again, upon hitting the surface, the heaving began. This time, there wasn't much left...nothing the fish were particularly interested in, anyway.

We returned to the island around 3:30, and I didn't feel normal again until about 8 that night. Determined to finish my certification, I loaded up on Dramamine and showed up at the dive shop again the next morning. The other students were impressed at my tenacity and resilience, but no way was I going home with the damn thing half-finished (no quarry dives for me!).

The second day of diving was a completely different experience. We had better weather (and thus no choppy boat ride), and I think Dramamine is a miracle drug (I'd never tried it before). Unlike the end of the first day, by the end of the second I was already thinking about when I'd get to dive again.

Just call me Jacqueline Cousteau:


*Note: The whole crew at Belize Diving Service, including my instructor Ines, were awesome, and I would highly recommend them if you're ever on Caye Caulker and want to dive.

you betta Belize it!

Returned late last night from a too-short return trip to Belize. I'll have stories and a few pictures to share over the next day or so, but first I wanted to share my excitement over a few pieces of news that broke just as we returned to the States:

1. Democrats take back the House, and may still yet gain control of the Senate, depending on the outcome in Virginia. We were glued to CNN at the Miami aiport last night, and again at home from about 2 to 4 am, and again upon waking this morning. I kind of missed being around for the full coverage, but I'm not sorry I missed the final week of campaign ads. (We'd already voted absentee weeks ago, no worries!) I hope the rest of the world can really see now that the American people are as fed up with this administration as they are. I just hope the election results amount to something, and that we can really see some big changes being made. Yes, we've got to change course in Iraq, but it's equally important that we fix healthcare and education here at home, and, yeah, raising the minimum wage would be nice too.

2. Britney files for divorce from K-Fed!! Here's where you can see that I'm a well-rounded person with a wide array of interests. I'm the first to admit that I enjoy some celeb gossip now and then, and I have to say I really had given up hope on Britney (not that I ever held her in especially high regard). But ever since she married that idiot, I just figured she was more comfortable reverting to her "country" (as she puts it) ways, popping out babies, eating Cheetos and putting up with all kinds of shit from a loser husband who was just milking her for everything he could get. But now she's actually leaving him, and now I can take solace in the fact that even the most seemingly hopeless cases can grow a spine and walk away from that kind of crap, maybe even with a little bit of dignity.

3. Back to the important stuff. Rumsfeld FINALLY resigned today, and it's about friggin' time. Seems to me they were waiting for the election results to make the final decision, because you know the Dems are going to launch some big bad investigations now, and Rummy doesn't want to be around to take the heat directly. If only we could get rid of Cheney and impeach Bush...but I'll take what I can get for now.

are your crossed fingers cramping up yet?

Mine are. Long story short, we've heard diddly squat on the house (to my one international reader: that means "nothing"!) I'm not even going to speculate on what happened. From talking to others who have gone through the home selling/buying nightmare, these things are to be expected. I suppose I should be thankful that we didn't get as far as having things in writing and *then* have the deal fall through. It's probably best that the lady disappeared this early on.

In an attempt to be optimistic, I will say that at least it seems we may have hit a price point that is generating more interest.

Also, I will say to anyone reading this who may be looking to buy a house: don't fuck with people. It's not nice, especially in this market. And if you decide you're not interested after making some tentative moves toward an offer, at least have the courtesy to let someone know. Maybe this is karmic payback for that time I went on a date with a guy I thought was really fun, but then on the date I realized I wasn't attracted to him--it was like a brother kind of thing--so instead of having the balls to tell him straight up I wasn't interested, I simply ignored all his calls until he stopped calling. I felt bad about that for a really long time, pretty much until the guy married a really great girl, which assuaged my guilt.

But anyway, I am *this* close to burying a statue of St. Joseph upside down in my yard...

waiting...

Yesterday we got the call: someone was making an offer on our house. We shared a few moments of excitement, which quickly lapsed into J admitting "I feel like I'm going to puke." I suppose excitement manifests itself differently for everyone!

They had offered us $10K less than our asking price, which we had just dropped by $10K about a week ago. So, J was reluctant to take it. (OK, I'll just say it, my husband is *stubborn*, no 2 ways about it). I can certainly understand his position, but considering our house has been on the market 4 months and this was our first offer, and adding in the fact that it is now a *total* buyer's market, especially in our area...well let's just say if it had been totally up to me I would have just taken the offer and been done with it.

We have countered with a number $5K more than they offered. You would think that if these are reasonable people, and if they really like the house, $5K should not be a big deal. But for now we just have to sit here and wait for the phone to ring...

another episode of "why I love science"!

"The whole of science consists of data that, at one time or another, were inexplicable." - B. O'Regan

Anyone who knows me knows I am a skeptic. If you forward me a stupid e-mail, I'm the one who'll look in up on snopes.com and send a rebuttal to the whole list. I don't believe in the paranormal, which means that certain people in my life don't enjoy watching "Ghosthunters" with me. I turn my nose up at "spirit balls" or other weird smudges in graveyard photographs, and thoroughly enjoyed a recent exhibit on "spirit photography" (which explained how all the tricks were done). What non-skeptics consider paranormal, I consider "things that science will eventually explain".

Having a background in neuroscience, I was especially intrigued and delighted to read this article in the NY Times, which chronicles recent discoveries that begin to explain (scientifically, that is) out-of-body experiences and other strange sensations once considered (not by me, of course) to fall within the realm of the paranormal:

They are eerie sensations, more common than one might think: A man describes feeling a shadowy figure standing behind him, then turning around to find no one there. A woman feels herself leaving her body and floating in space, looking down on her corporeal self.

Such experiences are often attributed by those who have them to paranormal forces.

But according to recent work by neuroscientists, they can be induced by delivering mild electric current to specific spots in the brain. In one woman, for example, a zap to a brain region called the angular gyrus resulted in a sensation that she was hanging from the ceiling, looking down at her body. In another woman, electrical current delivered to the angular gyrus produced an uncanny feeling that someone was behind her, intent on interfering with her actions.

To read the rest of the article, click here.

It was bad enough having to get up at 4:45 AM to make it to the airport for a 6:45 AM flight. On top of that, I knew the plane was going to be one of those small ones, because the airline recently (for some ungodly reason) switched over all of their flights between Chicago and Hartford from normal, safer-feeling planes to the tiny, wobbly ones where you can barely hear yourself think over the engine noise. I'd also forgotten to medicate myself, it being so early and all.

I had a driver to take me to the airport, and noticing his foreign accent, I started to chit-chat with him, asking where he was from and the like (he was Bulgarian). Halfway to the airport, he suddenly--and OUT OF NOWHERE, I might add--asks me, "Do you believe in God?" Now, aside from the fact that this is a highly inappropriate question for a service provider to ask his customer (who is TRAPPED in his car with no escape), my immediate reaction to this question was an overwhelming feeling of being in a bad made-for-TV movie, this scene being the one that foreshadows my forthcoming doom in the rickety plane I am on my way to board.

I made the mistake of telling him I was an agnostic (which I then had to define for him). He went on to preach to me for the entire remainder of the car ride, basically telling me that if a person *really* wants to find God, he will (no shit). To add insult to injury he alluded to his being a veterinarian by training and thinking that evolution was ridiculous (WRONG way to approach the religion topic with me, sunshine). As we pulled up to the terminal, he said he was sorry we didn't have more time, and that perhaps we would meet again, maybe he would even pick my husband and I up from the airport at Thanksgiving (we are definitely now going to drive, not fly!)

Lesson learned: next time a stranger asks me if I believe in God, I will steal a line from Frank Lloyd Wright and answer, "Yes, I believe in god. I spell it N-A-T-U-R-E."

Housekeeping

Before I moved in with J, I had one simple rule: I don't do garbage. I mean, I knew I'd get stuck with the majority of the household tasks, so I just wanted to lay it down right then and there. I never wanted to take the garbage out again. This is probably because in my last apartment I lived on the third floor, so taking the garbage out meant going all the way downstairs--not forgetting the keys since the doors locked automatically--and then going into the darkest corner of the parking lot to the dumpster, where sometimes a homeless man would be hanging out to collect the recyclables, touching the nasty dumpster lid, and then taking the 3 flights back up to my apartment.

Well, my friends, I believe that I have just discovered a household task that makes taking the garbage out seem like a day watching monkeys fondle themselves at the zoo (which, in case there's any doubt, is something I would consider FUN):

The worst household task EVER is having to fix an inside-out plunger after having frantically plunged a crap-clogged toilet. It's bad enough when the thing goes inside-out mid-plunge as the water rises in the clogged bowl, because then you don't know if it'll still work or if you'll end up with shit water all over your cream-colored bathroom rug. But then you have to deal with the fear of that thing splashing shit-water at your face as you try to put it right (and you can't just put it back on the floor inside-out because, well let's just say one should never have to see what's on the inside of the plunger after a frantic plunging).