Robbie and I just got back from playing squash at the gym with our new racquets. Anyone who saw my playing style at UCSB would be shocked at how much difference a decent racquet can make (or how much I improved by not playing for six weeks, but that seems less likely). My racquet was the bargain-basement model at the discount sports store, too, so that really says something about the racquets they have for rent at UCSB. I still lost to Robbie for three games in a row, but the games took a lot longer and were more fun for both of us, I think.
Other than that, today was pretty uneventful. I wrote some and edited some, and then I edited something for my friend that she needs for a potential job. That was pretty fun, actually, because the thing she wrote was interesting, and it was good to talk to her for a little while.
Now we're relaxing watching Joe Schmo. I suspect there's a twist at the end, like he knew all along, or something. Sometimes things just don't seem spontaneous. You heard it here first.

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tizzed: My squash racket is bargain basement from a sporting goods store, and its pretty much the same as the Reccen models. You watch Spike TV? arrest that woman! You can't watch TV for men! Unless you watch MXC

Jess: Hmm, maybe I just found a good deal, then. It seemed a lot lighter than the Rec Cen one. Robbie's was good too, but he paid a little more for his so I figured it would be. I don't know why Joe Schmo is on Spike. It's not especially man-oriented--well, I guess the challenge with the strippers today was, but it's not as a general rule. Anything is better than Lifetime, though...

tizzed: Come on.. I bet all you do is watch "O" TV.... That, or you're addicted to "Starting Over"

Jess: You mean the movie with Candice Bergen? I liked it, but I wouldn't say I'm addicted. Or is this something else on the O Network that I'm not familiar with?

Heather: Oh, Tizzed told me about "Starting Over" the other day! They lock you in a house with a bunch of people who were recently fired or divorced, or something, and force you to make something new of yourself. Or something.

Jess: Maybe Tizzed should go on that to help him with his physics postdoc->carpenter transition. (Tizzed, please note that I said "carpenter" and not "Jewish carpenter"...)

Heather: There's just something about that Jesus thing that makes me laugh every time.

Jess: Well, there is a Methodist hymn that says that there's "just something about that name." I don't think it's supposed to be something hilarious, necessarily, but whatever works for you. My mom and I felt that that was one of the dumbest hymns in our hymnal. Mostly because you could replace "Jesus" with any other two-syllable name (like "Satan" or "Egbert") and it still worked fine.

Robbie: Heather, I think it is funny when hispanic kids are named jesus too....

I don't recommend spray paint. Actually, let me qualify that. It works great on small details, like the little carving parts on the front of the desk around the drawers. It's much easier to use spray paint there than a regular roller or brush. But for large flat surfaces, the spray paint is pretty splotchy, and the fumes are pretty rough by the end of painting, say, a tabletop. In the end, the desk looks pretty nice, although the top is a little bit blotchy, and the file cabinet is interesting. Not bad, but not at all what I expected. The drawers, which are green, are nice and smooth, but the file cabinet itself, the blue part, is brighter than I'd expected and kind of patchy. It's not a bad look, actually. It looks like a texture, which was not the intention, and maybe looks a little odd with the non-textured doors, but it's OK.
The sander was pretty nice, though. It didn't completely remove the paint, but it made a really smooth surface, which was my main concern. I think it'll do great on bare wood the next time we have something like that to finish. I think for finished furniture, though, a chemical stripper is the only way to go if you want to get all the finish off.
That pretty much consumed my whole day, although I did get a little bit of writing done. (OK, a very little. All right, 58 words. It's something, but only in the most technical sense.) Tomorrow I'm going to set up the desk, and then I'm going to get some real work done, since that was the whole idea behind getting a desk ready, after all.
It's really chilly here--there were people out today with gloves and hats on. I hear tonight it might frost. I'm still feeling pretty confused about the whole concept of fall, but I've been wearing fleece-lined khakis, so at least I'm keeping warm.

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Matt Lippert: Where can you get fleece-lined khakis? L.L. Bean has only fleece-lined jeans.

EV: Shit, man, Matt had my comment EXACTLY. Only mine was going to have a more pejorative tone, as in "who would make fleece-lined khakis?" (I do very much acknowledge their practical appeal, but Jess expects me to hark on style so I didn't want to let her down)

Jess: J. Crew. I bought two pairs this spring when they were on sale, and had them shipped to my parents, so this is my first chance to wear them. One is lined in red, and I think it looks kinda sharp, but one is flower-lined and definitely less chic.

matt lippert: Well, I just checked their website, and there aint no fleece-lined pants to be found. This isn't some sort of wild-goose chase, is it?

Jess: Well, they had them in the spring. They don't even have the snipe-print ones anymore?

Well. Remember how I was complaining that everyone thought I looked like I was fifteen? It's still true--one need only look at my new driver's license to see that--but this morning, in the bathroom, I discovered that I have lines on my forehead. That's right. Lines. I did some diagnostic scrunching and discovered that they're in the creases my forehead makes when I'm surprised, so I guess not only am I getting lined, but I'm also completely failing at ever being blase.
I wouldn't have guessed I'd freak out about this, but I kind of did. It's not that I mind looking older exactly--I've wanted to look older for the last ten years--but I mind getting lined and wrinkled while the rest of my features still look pixieish. I'm afraid I'm going to look like some kind of freak, like a Munchkin or Shirley Temple Black. So I got some anti-wrinkle cream. They also had a cream that fights both wrinkles and blemishes, which in all fairness is probably more what I need, but the whole sad concept hit a little too close to home for me to buy it.
On the up side, I bought a sander. (No, not for my face.) We went to the hardware store and I loaded up our cart with all sorts of furniture-stripping products in preparation for painting the things we got yesterday, but Robbie wandered off and cleverly found a power sander for $25--cheaper than the furniture-stripping products--and I think it'll be strong enough to take off the paint. I'm so excited. I've wanted to own a power tool for some time now, and I always figured it would be a drill, but this is really good enough. We got paint for the furniture, too--dark green and white for the desk, and then the file cabinet will be dark blue with the same dark green on the drawer fronts. I think the bookcase will probably end up being plain dark blue, maybe with white accents, but I don't know that for certain yet. The paint is all spray enamel, which I've never used before but apparently works on both wood and metal, and between that and the sander I'm pretty excited to get started and try out the new techniques.
Oh, and to cap off my feeling old, my mother-in-law sent me a picture of my youngest brother-in-law at football practice. Because he's wearing pads, he probably looks artificially post-pubescent, but still I swear he looks about five years older than when I saw him in July. Is it just me, or do boys grow up all at once, but girls take longer? I don't think a similar thing happened to me, but maybe that's just because every day when you're eleven or twelve feels like ten years in a maximum-security prison. I don't know. Anyhow, someone who couldn't cross the street without someone holding his hand when I started going out with Robbie should not look that old. Evie, remember when you saw him at Communiversity freshman year and asked Helen if Robbie had an illegitimate child? Those were good times, when young people still looked young and I wasn't looking like Dorian Gray and his picture all rolled into one.

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EV: I do remember that, the idea that he plays football is astonishing. Oh, and as advice to the general public, I don't recommend reading The Picture of Dorian Gray because you really liked The Importance of Being Earnest and you think Oscar Wilde is just a rollicking card. Trust me, you will not be pleased.

robbie: To really understand what is going on, you have to realize that everyone at AJ's school is required to play football (well, the boys at least. The girls are required to play frisbee...)

Heather: I thought the desk was going to be fire engine red?

Jess: Well, that was my idea, but I had some artistic differences with my colleague.

Heather: Yeah... I guess I can see that. Oh well, I like the sound of your current color scheme.

Today was an extremely productive day. We got our new driver's licenses, and I have to say that the driver's-license process is enjoyable enough that it pretty much makes up for the car-registration process. We had to bring a lot of proofs of residence and identity, which was annoying, but it went very quickly, was pleasingly automated, and we left with our new licenses in hand. Also, we registered to vote on a touch screen, which was kinda fun.
After licensing, we went to a record store and to a ridiculously cheap and pretty tasty pizza place, and then we were set to go off looking for desks, but we decided to try my parents to see if they had anything they wanted to get rid of, since we were more or less in their neighborhood already. A few hours later, we left their house with a desk, a file cabinet, an old mirror, two lamps, some pairs of pantyhose, a ruler that says "Jessica's Ruler" on it, and four turntable levelers, and another lamp and a bookcase are being held in their garage until we bring the car back. It's like a yard sale, only better, because it's all free, and my parents seem happy to get rid of things, so it's good all around.
After we cleaned my parents out of stuff, we all went to a new Mexican restaurant not far from my parents' house. I have to admit I was dubious--this is the first time I've gone out for Mexican since we got to Pittsburgh and I didn't have very high hopes. I was cheered, however, when the waitstaff in the lobby were actually speaking Spanish, and the food was really quite good. There was a little pronunciation key in the back of the menu ("tor-TEE-yuh"), though, and that cracked me up.
Now I'm trying to figure out what to do with the desk and file cabinet and the unarrived bookcase. The desk is wooden, painted off-white, and the file cabinet and bookcase are both unpainted metal. We're thinking right now that the desk should be dark green with white drawer fronts (my original vote was red with white, but I can live with dark green too). I wouldn't care about painting the file cabinet if it were just by itself, but I do want to paint the bookcase and so I may as well paint the file cabinet too. I've never painted metal and I'm curious to see how it goes. I don't have any ideas for colors, though. The bookcase is really pretty cool--it has glass fronts for all the drawers that you lift up and, I think, slide back in order to get to the books. I suppose I'll have to be careful not to paint them.

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EV: I hope you didn't faint at the DMV. Doesn't sound like it.

Jess: Nah, I remained upright. I didn't have to take a road test, though, and that probably had a lot to do with it.

Has anyone else ever had that experience where they live somewhere for five years, then move back to where they grew up, and then one day they listen to Europop all day, and also they get a comment in their blog from Dr. J., and by the end of the day they really feel homesick for the place they left, which is disorienting because in one sense they are homer now than they were before, but in another, very real sense, they can never go home again? Especially when their great-aunts are living in their old bedroom? But then, they can't go back to the place they left because, heck, Dr. J is gone and Tizzed is leaving and pretty soon after that everyone else will leave too? And also, how come Europop makes them homesick, since it's not like the songs express a deep common human longing or anything?
Yeah, I figured I was alone.
On the up side, I edited 80 pages today, and I went to the gym. The gym closed early today because of Rosh Hashanah and will be closed all weekend, and next weekend it closes early because of Yom Kippur, and the weekend after that it's closed for Sukkot, and the weekend after that it's closed for Shemini Atzeret/Simchat Torah. I know what Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are about, and I've heard of Sukkot, but I'm deeply, deeply suspicious of that last one. I really have no right to complain, though, because they're open until 2 on Thanksgiving and I think we can sail right through the Christmas season with nary a closure. (Although that really won't do me any good, since I'll be in Princeton trying to figure out the sweet spot between drinking enough wine that I have an excuse to lose at Monopoly and drinking so much that I finally say "Seriously, what's the fascination with German appliances?")
Tomorrow we're going to go get our drivers' licenses, I believe, and we're going to try to get a desk and chair to set up the spare room. I've decided that if I'm going to end up working from home, either freelancing or on my book, I need to have an area devoted to working. I tried this today by sitting on the loveseat and not on the TV-watching sofa, and it worked OK, but it was awfully close to the TV-watching sofa. I think a different room would really help.

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Tizzed: Europop kicks ass... Next time I see you I'll give you my europop mix CDs. All europop makes me do is keep on running...no longing for anything.... Well, not totally true...

First, I'd like to clear up some lingering questions from yesterday. Abby Bartlett is the first lady on The West Wing. Her daughter Zoe was kidnapped at the end of last season. To learn about Gertrude Stein, try here. I can't fully explain "whoopty," but it sounded derisive.
The Great Closet Cleaning went pretty well. I think I hadn't fully appreciated the magnitude of the task until we got started, and we're not even close to done, but we did accomplish a lot today. We cleared out a lot of boxes from the front of the closet, went through the shoe collection (my mom very bravely got rid of about a dozen pairs), and started in on the top shelf. I may be being too optimistic, but I think once we get to actual clothes and not just random periphery, it'll go pretty quickly. Then, we'll tackle the bedside table made entirely of books.
Oh, and I have a question. There's a dance song that I heard sometimes this spring, and the lyrics are just "Na na na, na na na na na" over and over again. Who made this song? I heard it again today, and it's in my head.

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Robbie: Is it something they chant at football games? Like "Na Na Na Na Hey Na Goodbye"....

tizzed: How new is this dance song? I've got a song "Santa Margherita" by The Van DenPlas that goes "na na na na na na na na na na nana" I think if you do a google search you'll get a site that comes up with this song. Lots of dance songs have na na na, though..

tizzed: Then there's "That ding ding track" by Mr. Potatohead that just goes "ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding" (writing doesn't do this brilliant song justice)

Matthew Lippert: I can perhaps believe there's someone who reads this who may have somhow missed the Wednesday's West Wing episode, but I thought, given the level of your readership, that such gems of the language as "whoopty" would be universally understood. It's such a great word, it could almost be Yiddish.

Dr. J: OK, so it is about time to admit I've been reading your blog here in the less exciting times of my work day. It is amazing to see just how much you can communicate via a simple text log, but I should have expected just such a stunning example of daily prose from a talented writer like Jess. Thanks for the updates, I miss good English.

Jess: DR. J! DR. J! Has my birthday card gotten there yet? I think the Santa Margherita song isn't right, because it seems kind of obscure and this isn't obscure. It's just this girl with a kind of high, squeaky voice singing "na na na, na na na na na" over and over again, and it was on the radio and stuff. I believe DJ Gavin Roy may even have played it at Dr. J's wedding.

EV: Kylie Minogue. "Can't get you out of my head". Also, it's Zoey. I don't know how you get on without me.

EV: Actually, looking up the lyrics, I think they're "la's" not "na's". But I always thought they were "na's", so I can see how you would, and I'm dead positive that's the song you heard. Because that was my first impulse, and my first impulses have a 100% accuracy record.

Adam: Gary Glitter, Rock & Roll part 2. Did you ever see that SImpsons, the one where Selma marries Troy McClure? Homer finds out that he's only marrying her for publicity reasons. Then at the wedding, when the ask if anyone thinks the wedding should not proceed, they cut to him, and he's thinking "Na na na na, na na na na, hey hey hey, good bye". I'll cut out the Simpsons/Seinfeld references now.

EV: Adam, while I appreciate the Gary Glitter suggestion, that is most decidedly not a dance song sung by a whiny female. Unless Jess has been spending a lot of time at Three Rivers Stadium (or whatever corporate name it has now), she probably hasn't been hearing that. Plus, I'm always right.

EV: By the way, I just re-read Robbie's comment at the top, and I love how he was thinking Rock & Roll part 2 and wrote the lyrics to Kiss Him Goodbye. Just to stay on the theme of reasons we love Robbie. And do you like how I'm filling your comments box? Yeah, I thought you would.

Jess: Evie, I love you more than I ever would have thought possible. I just found it on iTunes and that's definitely the song.

EV: Woo hoo! Score one for the Evester.

Jess: Oh, and I think Robbie really was thinking of Kiss Him Goodbye. Sometimes they play that at the end of games when the visiting team is obviously going to lose. It's more of a taunt.

EV: I knew that.

tizzed: It would have been a lot easier to identify had you said "The song where she sings 'I just can't get you out of my head'" Still, Santa Margherita is a better song...

Adam: I also thought briefly that you were thinking of the Ketchup song. Have you heard that one? I only mentioned Gary Glitter for Robbie's sake, not Jess's.

EV: I know, and I'm just being a pain in the ass.

Jess: Oh, yeah, the Ketchup Song. Dr. J introduced me to it. I used to have the video on my computer, but I erased it. I agree that it would have been way easier to find if I'd known the lyrics, but the problem was that the "na na na" part took over my brain so completely that I didn't realize there were other words too. Googling "na na na" is a total exercise in futility, by the way. Never try it.

robbie: Gary Glitter is a child molester now, right? Or is that Kylie Minogue....

Adam: I think he dabbles in child porn, actually. I just wanted to write child porn, so that googling perverts end up on Jess's site. Sorry, but I felt obliged to clear the record.

robbie: I think if you wrote "kiddy porn" it would attract the googling perverts better...

As a tribute to my charming and handsome husband, whose birthday, as you know and are no doubt out commemorating with sparklers and bunting at this very moment, is today, I'd like to post some of the witticisms he came up with today. Keep in mind that this is just a sampling from one day, people.

Jess: Blogger just ate my post. It was a great post. I made fun of your parents.
Robbie: You know, my dad is a computer science professor.

Jess: So I was thinking, maybe for your birthday I could show you how to set up your own blog.
Robbie: Oh, whoopty. A present that doesn't cost anything.

Abby Bartlett (weeping): I had this dream last night about Zoe, and she was in the bed my grandmother gave her, that little pine bed, and I was holding her.
Robbie: Now, Freud would say that you're every character in your dreams.

Jess: So I was reading this great article in the New Yorker about Gertrude Stein, about these revisions that she made to this one poem, and it was incredibly interesting, because apparently Alice B. Toklas made her--
Robbie: Wait, who are you talking about? I thought you said Gloria Estefan.
Jess: Oh, good lord.
Robbie: You know, Miami Sound Machine?

Happy birthday, sweetheart. I hope you stay just as weird as you are now for many years to come.

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Robbie: Thanks. Another present that doesn't cost anything.... :)

EV: For his birthday, I'm sending Robbie a box of Cheerios with one Corn Flake embedded deep inside. And I really wish The West Wing would just shut up already and not make me go to bed every Wednesday night moved and teary.

Adam: whoopty?

Matthew Lippert: I'm glad to see that your birthday celebrations didn't interfer with important tv viewing. Happy Birthday Robbie.

Chi: I'm still hung over from the heavy drinking I did last night in celebration of Robbie's birthday. Who IS Gertrude Stein anyway?

EOL: For that matter, who is Abby Bartlett, and why is she a pine bed in her dreams?

EV: Oh, Charles. You really are a boy scientist, aren't you.

Following Estella's suggestion, I'm putting the Site Meter button on the bottom of my page. I wasn't sure it would work, because that's not where Site Meter drops it by default, but so far, so good. Let me know if you have any more problems--I wasn't having trouble scrolling yesterday, so I'm not sure I'll know if something else goes wrong.
Today was really a great day. It wasn't so much that anything fantastic happened, but a lot of little good things came together. I got a bunch of lingering errands done, I got Robbie's birthday present, and I met my oldest friend for coffee. We ran into her last week at the bookstore--she was pretty surprised to see me, since she hadn't known that we were living in Pittsburgh now--and we exchanged numbers, and this afternoon she was in my neighborhood and we decided to get together. It was definitely the highlight of my day. Hopefully I'll be seeing a lot of her, since she doesn't live too far from us and neither of us is working now (although she's interviewing for a job tomorrow, so I hope this changes for her soon).
I also started the book I made notes for last week, which I'm cleverly naming "Book #2." I think with this new one on the way I really have to give the first one a name. It's like cats--they don't need names until they need to be differentiated. Maybe I'll start code-naming them, like software products. Anyhow, it's fun so far, which I think is basically meaningless because I've only written 854 words and if I weren't still enjoying it, that would be a very bad sign. I didn't do any editing, though. So much for the whole carrot/stick concept.
Robbie's birthday is tomorrow. He'll be 27. I cleverly pointed out to him tonight that now he'll be divisible by nine, news that was greeted with almost total indifference. I did impress him after that, though, with my ability to determine whether or not a number is prime. He tried me on 8,000,229, and I scoffed. This is more or less how we pass the time these days. On the other hand, my friend today told me that her dad and his wife spend all their time naming and photographing the squirrels in their backyard, so I guess we still have a ways to fall.

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EV: I read the first 50 pages of Book #1, and I love it. Problem is that I don't have enough ink to print it out (or at least I'd get scolded for doing so), so I can't bring it to bed and read it leisurely in a reclining position, which will mean it takes me much longer to get through it. But hopefully I will be done with #1 before you are done with #2.

tizzed: Site meter works much better now. I've got to read carefully. I read "lingering" as "lingereing" and thought you spent the day buying frilly undergarments....

Heather: I'm having no trouble scrolling now either, and I'm scared as hell to read your blog without leaving a comment.

Jess: Oh, you're safe, because I've only figured out how to see domain names (I think that might be all I get with the free package). So if you log in at home I can't tell you apart from me, and if you log in from school I can't tell you apart from Tizzed or Matt Lippert. Anyone from an unusual domain, though, for example someone logging in from uni-muenster, is totally busted.

EV: You can see referral pages with the free service, I don't pay anything. In the left column of your stats page, click on "referral pages" right under "details".

EV: Sorry, that's under visitors, "By referral".

Jess: Oh ho, now no one is safe. Wait, though, I just tried it and none of you came from anywhere, except a couple from Google. I bet it's because you all have it as your home page. Yup.

Is anyone else having a problem scrolling past the new Site Meter button, other than Tizzed? I just added it this weekend, but I'm not sure I want to keep it. For one thing, I'm not sure it's healthy for me to be able to track who exactly is visiting my site; especially since I'm not working, I think I might start checking it obsessively, and I don't think any of you want to get an email from me saying "You checked my site this morning at 10:03 and you didn't leave a comment even though what I wrote is very funny and I know where you live." And obviously it's a problem if no one can scroll down. So let me know.
Last night's dinner went very well. The food was tasty and the conversation flowed pretty smoothly, considering that I hadn't had a long talk with my friend in about five years and Robbie hardly knew her. We're going to get together again on Thursday, after I help my mom in the Great Closet Cleaning. I've mentioned to a few people that I'm helping her with this, and they all say I'm being really nice, but ever since I was getting ready to move this summer, I've had a mania for eliminating clutter. As far as I'm concerned, she's just giving me a fix. If she's lucky, I'll leave without organizing her closet by color.
I spent a while this afternoon putting books on our bookshelves--this weekend Robbie and I were looking at my parents' open shelves and realized that if we turned our bookcases sideways, like theirs are, we could fit twice as many books on them. We still need some shelves, but it's a lot better now. I'm not listening to any more teasing from Robbie about my book collection, though--it's undeniably large, but he has about seven shelf-equivalents of physics textbooks, and that definitely rivals my books. Plus, mine are just hipper. I mean, which sounds like a must-read: The Reluctant King: The Life and Reign of George VI 1895-1952 or Dynamics of Ordering Processes in Condensed Matter? I know. It practically leaps off the shelves at you.

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EOL: What Site Meter button?

Jess: I just moved it off, since Heather said she was having problems too.

EV: That's weird... well, I would definitely not give up on it, it may be hard to discipline yourself with the checking thing but I am very happy being able to track my stats. I'm about to go over 2,800 visits, and that makes me feel like a real website kinda.

estella: Maybe move the sitemeter button to the very bottom of your page. Then it shouldn't be an issue, right? Like if you put the code right below the "Blogger button" code? That should work. It works on mine, anyway.

We've had an all-yuppie day so far. This morning we went golfing, and it went OK. I haven't been golfing for, I'm guessing, about a year, and it went better than I expected, although still not especially well. The course we played on crosses a road several times (by which I mean that you need hit it across the road, not just cross the road between holes), and that would have been nerve-wracking except we were playing best ball and I never actually made it across.
Then we hit Whole Foods for food for tonight (and a lot of other things we noticed while looking for food for tonight), and then we went to the liquor store near Whole Foods, because it's one of the few in the city that's open on Sunday and we needed white wine for the risotto. I decided while I was there that although I'm generally opposed to theft in all its forms, before we leave Pennsylvania I really want a Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board shopping cart. I don't know how I'm going to pull this off, since security seems pretty tight, but I have two years or so to come up with a plan. Anyhow, we restocked our wine rack, and now we're back home, getting ready to start getting ready for our dinner guest. I had the apartment all tidy on Thursday, but now it's definitely not, and I'm trying to decide whether or not I care. I suspect I don't, beyond maybe finding a place for her to sit.
I want you all to ask me next weekend whether I actually accomplished anything this week or just did annoying cyclical household tasks all the time. I was busy all this week, but I feel I have nothing to show for it (other than marzipan Heinz products, of course) and that's no good. I'm determined that this week will be better.

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Tizzed: I wonder how Robbie did on the road hole. His balls do funny things when asphalt is involved. I also might be selling my golf clubs 'cuz I don't want to move them. :( Oh, well. I'll just buy new ones. (But I might have to keep my 15 dollar driver which I can hit over 300 yards with..)

I'd like to apologize for yesterday's somewhat lackluster post, but I had to conceal what my mom and I really spent yesterday doing, which was making marzipan Heinz products for the birthday cake. Last Monday was my dad's 57th birthday, and next Wednesday is Robbie's first birthday in Pittsburgh, so my mom and I figured it would be a perfect theme, and yesterday we made little ketchup and mustard bottles and little pickles, one of which I dropped and stepped on, with extremely sticky consequences. Also, at one point I catapulted some frosting at my mother. It was good fun all around.
Today was the party, and it went well, although we made approximately six times as much cake as we needed. After the party, we went out to dinner at Soba, which is a vaguely Asian restaurant in Shadyside. It was excellent, although I suspect the table next to us was slightly perplexed by our funeral planning for my mother's cat (the cat is still alive, but all the commercials say that funerals should be planned while the potential deceased is still living, and that's especially true when the funeral plans involve my father digging a three-foot-deep trench in the backyard--or at least they did, until my father was informed of them).
Robbie and I played racquetball this morning at the JCC. It was my first racquetball experience, and a huge change from squash. I'm not good at squash--anyone who's seen me play will agree with this--but I'm still accustomed to certain things about it, like how bouncy the ball is and how long the racquet is, and those things are disorientingly different in racquetball. I kept running up to the ball after a bounce, only to have it whizz up past my head and bounce off two other walls before I could figure out what was happening. It may not be my sport. It's true that squash couldn't be called my sport either (except for Reverse Polish Notation Squash--that is inarguably my sport), but at least I'm used to it.
Actually, they had a little diagnostic chart to rank your squash skills, and I think I'm in between a 2.0 and a 2.5. There's a bit of grade inflation here--2.0 is the lowest--so it's not quite as good as it sounds, but in some aspects of the game I'm definitely not at the bottom. The 2.5 description was full of phrases like "still has major problems," so I think I'm not overrating myself there. There was also a board to find squash partners, and there was one promising-looking beginner who had his number up, but from his printing skills I'm guessing he's about seven years old. He also only wrote six digits of his phone number on the board, so contacting him (or his mom) to set up a game would be nearly impossible.
Oh, and one last tidbit of news--there is apparently a new Mr. Blog and the City. (Well, not new exactly; BatC and I met him many years ago, but he's returning from a long hiatus to make his first appearance as a romantic lead.) Evidently he is now a chef/med student/aspiring artiste. I'm sure I speak for all my readers who have any idea what I'm talking about when I say that we wish BatC the best in this new endeavor.

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EV: Awww, Robbie's first birthday! I'll send him a SpongeBob sippie cup.

tizzed: Never try to play Squash and Racquetball together. It'll make both games worse. Racquetball you try to hit the bottom of the wall, and you use your wrists to hit the ball. Squash, you aim for 1 foot above the ground and use your arms to swing. Ugh. I hope there'll be squash partners in Happy Valley. Its much more fun than racquetball...

Unfortunately, our dinner guest never made it last night, due to some extremely dire (and wrong) forecasts about Hurricane Isabel that made the prospect of venturing out seem inadvisable. I read some news reports today that made it sound like Pennsylvania got hit fairly hard, and I know that the storm's center passed about 25 miles east of us, but all we got here was a decent amount of rain and a little bit of wind. No flooding, no power lines down--a regular thunderstorm does more damage.
So, we stayed in and just ate our lasagna by ourselves last night, and waited for the violent storm to begin. Actually, the lasagna didn't turn out all that well--the filling was very good but the noodles didn't really cook through--so maybe it's good that she didn't come over. Now we need to come up with something for the rescheduled dinner on Sunday. I'm thinking shrimp risotto, which, by virtue of being the only thing I know how to cook, has more or less become my signature dish, but we'll see.
(Actually, that's a bit of an exaggeration. I can cook a few other things: popcorn, pancakes, very basic pasta, Thanksgiving turkey, chicken soup that no one else likes because they all have bad attitudes, and lemon bars. Oh, and seven-cup increments of vanilla buttercream frosting. That's a new one. But you know those stupid Carl's Jr. commercials with the guy staring at the cuts of meat trying to figure out what to buy? That's me.)
Today I introduced my mother to the joys of City Confidential. I think she was really moved by today's story of a voyeuristic Fort Lauderdale police chief married to a prostitute who had the deacon of the local evangelical church as a client. We also watched A Baby Story, but she can watch it with quiet superiority rather than my wide-eyed dread, so that makes for a less communal experience. Which reminds me that I have a poll question for all of you who've watched daytime TV commercials lately: who do you think is more doped up on Valium, the PediaSure boy with the new rabbit or the moms at the Balmex party? Discuss.

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Tizzed: Shrimp Rissoto? Hrrmmm. You can cook a thanksgiving turkey, but not anything else? The thanksgiving turkey was the most stressful thing I ever had to cook. Maybe 'cuz I'm a physicist, and I like recipies. As for meat, all you need to know is : New York Strip and ribeye = so good. Everything else = not so good (for just a plain steak that is..)

How I know I'm different from your average girl:
I'm watching the repeat of the season finale of Friends right now, and I'm thinking, "What is Phoebe doing saying yes to that other guy? There's a physicist up for grabs! How can she be so stupid?" And I'm not even joking. The physicist is way, way more appealing.
I suspect it's genetic. Just look at the comments from yesterday if you have any doubt.

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Heather: Yeah, I didn't like that physicist guy. I was glad she chose the other one. But I think that's the reaction they want viewers to have, so I guess I have fallen into their trap.

Jess: You're a slave to the network man, my friend.

Last night Heather and I were talking on the phone about people who have crushes on other people (never you mind how we got onto this topic), and I told her that, in my opinion, anyone developing a crush on her would have her rotten temper as an integral pillar of this crush. She said this was impossible, since not that many people know she has a rotten temper.
So I pose this question to all of you: until you read the preceding paragraph, did you think of Heather as all sweetness and light, or as a snarling mass of curly-haired evil? Feel free to back up your conclusion with anecdotal evidence, photographs of broken appliances, or police reports. (And I fully expect a comment from our favorite expatriate, now that I know she's reading. An email wouldn't hurt either, as some of us might miss you. I'm just saying.)
In other news, a few days ago I emailed a local college-guide publishing company that was profiled on TV, asking them if they ever needed a copyeditor. This isn't the sort of thing I usually do, but I figured, why not? I just got email back from them saying they wanted to see my resume. Obviously this isn't a sure road to some work, but it's a good start. I'm pleased.
Okay, it's back to making frosting for me. It's not that hard, even though it does involve a candy thermometer, and that sort of thing normally makes me nervous. I want to go to the gym this afternoon, but I'm not sure it's going to happen. We'll see.

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Tizzed: I just the other day witnessed the Heather temper! (can I do this 400 char?) I wanted to double-side print my thesis, and she was showing me how. I was goofing around acting like I knew what to do, and she just said "Okay, you do it!" And sat down. She helped me after I said "I NEED you!" I thought she was being sarcastic at the time.... maybe not..

tizzed: Oh yeah, and Heather just reminded me that what really set her off is when I said "Thank you...MOTHER!" Real sarcastic-like. She wanted to make sure I didn't misrepresent the truth of the sit-ee-ation

Heather: That's right, Tizzed. Tell it like it happened.

Matthew Lippert: Let me tell you about the last time I made frosting. After melting chocolate and mixing it with milk, I had a grainy paste. Then I added the butter and I had a grainy paste swimming in melted butter. Mixing vigorously yielded a grainy paste swimming in melted butter. Ben suggested adding water, which seemed silly, but I did and I ended up with a perfectly smooth glaze. The moral: just add water.

I had a lot of things I wanted to get done tonight, seeing as how we're having our first dinner guest tomorrow, and how I agreed to make twelve cups of frosting for a birthday cake for this weekend, and how the laundry's piled up, but we just hooked up the DSL and it's not going to happen. I may never move off the sofa again.
I went to my parents' today and, while we were looking for some baking pans in the back bedroom of my great-aunts' house, I found the piece of home decor that I think will really bring our apartment together. It's a poster my mom made in high school, apparently to illustrate some psychology book, describing the traits of Other Directed Man.
There's a picture of Other Directed Man, and you'd recognize him, since his picture appears on the doors of men's bathrooms everywhere. Other Directed Man has three main arenas in which he performs: work, play, and heart. There's a little flow chart to illustrate how Other Directed Man operates in each of these zones, and that's the real meat of the Other Directed Man poster.
It's easy to understand Other Directed Man at work. His "'business' is people," and, from that, his "'work' is an effort in cooperation." He's the guy in sales you desperately try to avoid, in other words. Other Directed Man at heart is a little bit more of an enigma. He is "radar," which leads to "approval by peer group," which forks off to both "define 'outcast'" and "affection and respect." Now, "define 'outcast'" makes very little sense (unless it's supposed to be "definite outcast," which seems pretty harsh), but the rest of it is somewhat understandable. Even the radar, if you consider that radar was fairly new back then and they probably tried to apply it everywhere. Maybe Other Directed Man invented radar, or heart radar, which I guess would be kind of like an MRI.
Other Directed Man at play is completely incomprehensible, however. He has two aspects: "'fun morality'" and "escape." "'Fun morality,'" which is in quotes on the poster, leads to something called "taste leadership," and "escape" leads to "sideways." I would almost understand "escape" if it didn't lead to "sideways," but the whole "'fun morality'"-"taste leadership" branch is totally opaque to me. There are no further explanations--the text stands alone, like VCR instructions translated from Japanese.
I think I'm going to hang this in a prominent place in our spare room, once we get it set up as an office. It'll be an inspiration for Robbie in his studies, and if I ever get stuck while I'm writing something, I can ask myself what Other Directed Man would say. Whatever I come up with would almost certainly be better.

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EV: Ok, I have no idea what just went on here.

Jess: Maybe I need to take a picture of Other Directed Man. Imagine the sort of visual aid used in 1950s instructional short films, and that's pretty close.

AWG: That settles it then. My 12th-grade science fair poster on "Set-Theoretic Equivalences to the Axiom of Choice" is being permanently withdrawn from familial scrutiny.

EOL: Anything to get it out of the living room!

I just got a telemarketing call from, I believe, Dishnet. (Only fourteen more long, long days until the no-call list becomes effective.) The telemarketer lady asked me if my mom or dad was available.
Sadly, I did the most expedient thing, which was to snort derisively, say "I'm twenty-six and not interested," and hang up the phone, but it occurs to me that it would have wasted more of her time and probably been more fun if I'd tried to pin her down on exactly how old she thought I was. Because I look younger than I am, and have compounded this by never wearing makeup and generally dressing casually, I get this sort of thing a lot (although this is the first time it's been voice-based). Although I usually just correct people, I decided a while ago that it was more enjoyable, and more societally worthwhile, to embarrass them, so as to stop them from making similar assumptions in the future.
When I was flying to Iowa two summers ago, a probably very nice older man saw me, and asked me concernedly if I was old enough to be flying by myself (to be fair to him, I'd had a rare bout of airsickness and was curled up in a blanket trying not to throw up, and I probably looked like I was all of twelve years old). I asked him, not confrontationally but in an information-gathering fashion, how old he thought I was, and I think then he realized he was in trouble, because he started to mumble, and I said, "No, seriously, how old? Just a guess." He said he didn't know. We went back and forth like that for a while until he really, really wanted to leave, and then I told him I was twenty-five. Though I think I may have ruined his flight from Denver to Cedar Rapids, I feel I performed a service for all my sisters in youthfulness.
And then there was the notable time when I was at the mini-golf place with Robbie, the summer we got married, and the counter girl, who was maybe fifteen (she had braces), asked Robbie--that's right, not me, Robbie--if I qualified for children's rates. Which you can't get if you're over twelve. The thing about that that always bothered me was, who did she think Robbie was? My dad? If not my dad, some pervert? Maybe someone who picked me up on the Internet? If so, shouldn't she have intervened? (Actually, judging from her complete gum-chewing indifference when I told her I was twenty-four, I doubt she would have intervened if Robbie had flung off my Underoos and despoiled me in front of the mini-golf hut.) Then there was the time when I was twenty-one and got carded to see Pi. The list goes on and on.
What I'm really looking forward to is when I have kids. Imagine the stares and nasty looks as I hobble down the street, nine months pregnant, in my college sweatshirt and sneakers! Although, given that I'm probably a minor and therefore can't be blamed if I'm corrupted into a life of sin, I think Robbie will get it twice as bad as I will.

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EV: Ah well, at least a coworker didn't look at a picture on your bulletin board of you as an 8-year-old and ask, "awww, is that your daughter?" I mean, ok, obviously there's a resemblance, but do you think I'm old enough to have an 8-year-old daughter? I mean I guess technically I'm old enough, but seeing as I plan to be approaching middle age when my first child turns 8, I was not pleased.

Jess: Oh, I can do you one better. Last year a coworker looked at a picture of me and my dad at my rehearsal dinner, taken not even two years earlier, and asked me if that was my daughter. Yep, eighteen-month-olds having children--it's a national problem. But I don't think this was reflective of anything other than that she was kind of vapid.

Adam: To add something in the opposite end of the spectrum, my Dad was carded at the Friday's (it may not have been Fridays, but one of those Ruby Tuesday-JP Rumpleseat-TJ McScratchy ripoffs), last year when he was visiting here. Takes guts to card a 56-year old, though she may have been looking to increase her tip.

Chi: if it makes you feel better Jess, Emily has this problem all the time...

Nothing makes time go slower than waiting for the UPS man, I'm finding. Especially when he's delivering the DSL equipment that will transform our internet service from "no good" to "so good." (And, of course, allow me to watch Teen Girl Squad on better than a frame-by-frame basis.)
Today has been productive, if you approach it from a certain frame of mind. I read a book called On Becoming A Novelist (it was supposed to be a Christmas present from my parents, but it got misplaced until last week) and then I wrote a page and a half of notes for a new book, and then I told Heather I'd just written a page and a half of notes and basically wrote another two pages of notes to her explaining what I'd said in my page and a half. It's good progress, but it's not as good as revising my other book would have been. (Or applying for jobs, but I haven't found any new ones to apply for, or cleaning the house, but the house is basically clean.) I'm much more excited about this than I am about revising, so I think the thing to do is set up a carrot-and-stick system wherein if I revise for half an hour, I get to write for half an hour. I find that systems like that usually work for me.
I think I may hear the UPS truck... wait for it... nooooo. Our buzzer is pretty faint, so whenever I think I hear the truck stopping outside I mute the TV and sit completely still, waiting. But no. Tomorrow the cable man is coming, so I suspect tomorrow afternoon will play out similarly.
One good thing that happened today, financially speaking, is that I got email from my old boss (the one I was freelancing for this summer) saying that they may have some more work for me to do. She said it's all pending their new budget numbers, though, so even though I suspect it'll work out that they'll have something, I don't think it'll be immediate. I hope it's soon, though. I got my credit card bill today--it encompasses the entire period from frantic Fed-Exing to cross-country motels to new furniture at Ikea--and I might as well just open an artery and mail it to Citi Cards. On the up side, it's the kind of bill that makes credit card companies smell possibility and increase one's credit limit, which I suppose is a good thing. Maybe.

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EV: You still haven't let me read any draft of your book. I don't know why you put me on the reader list at the "near-finished" level, it's not like I'll be that critical. No, that is not a joke.

Jess: Ask, and ye should check, uh, yine inbox.

A pass for Tizzed, eh? I don't know. If I hand out too many passes, then pretty soon it'll just be Robbie I'm yelling at, and I can do that in my spare, non-blog time.
We went to the Jewish Community Center today and got our trial membership. I'm pretty excited. The facilities are nice, the hours are good, and everyone seems friendly. Add to that that we could more or less spit on the JCC from our apartment, and it's an appealing prospect indeed. Robbie is less excited, because they don't have any group sports that he'd like to participate in, and because the lounges are sex-segregated (they're attached to the locker room), so he has a really cool game facility that he doesn't know anyone to play with in. But we're going to drop in several times this week and see how it goes.
They also have really good classes in Jewish history, culture, and so forth. It makes me almost wish I were Jewish--I mean, if I belong to the JCC I can go to anything, but as it is I'd feel like a bit of a poser. Oh well. I suppose until I open my Agnostics Who Don't Necessarily Just Want To Hang Out With Other Agnostics And Actually Kind Of Prefer Somewhat Religious People As Long As They Aren't In Your Face About It Community Center, this is the next best thing.
Dinner with my high school friend has been pushed off until Thursday. I'm kind of disappointed, because we haven't done anything social with people our own age since we moved here. On a scale of sociable to unsociable, I'm way down on the someday-will-get-devoured-by-her-own-cats end, but even I'm missing social contact. I knew it was bad this morning when I was watching an infomercial this morning for the St. Barnabas assisted living facility and started envying the little groups of elderly people all shuffling off to see Tommy Dorsey together. And Robbie pointed out he'd have no problem joining a regular golf foursome there.
So, that's where we are today--slowly moving towards becoming Jewish retirees. It could work.

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Tizzed: Robbie should join some JCC sports teams. Won't he be instantly one of the best people on the team? Boy, can that goyem shoot a basketball, oy!

Robbie: I would play hockey if they had a team.... Top Shelf! Not so much street hockey 'round here.

Chi: nice, I finally catch up on the last few days of updates, see Jess's request for comments, click on the "0 Comments" link and what do I see? 2 comments already! oh well. Just got back from watching "Lost in Translation" -- a wonderful, touching and even comic masterpiece. Highly recommended...

Heather: Here's the thing to do: Ask yourself, "What would Sarah Jessica Parker do?" (I watched E!'s special on her yesterday afternoon.) I think she'd take the Jewish culture classes. Then again, I think she's jewish. She had a beautiful wedding in a synogogue, after all.

Jess: Yes, but what would Shemor do? On the other hand, who am I kidding? Shemor would have organized a neighborhood-wide fall festival by now, and neighborhood children would abandon their own mothers and run into her arms whenever they saw her passing by on the street. So you're right, I should just try WWSJPD instead...

Four days, people. Four days without a comment. I like to think of myself as self-reliant, but what do you think I am, J.D. Salinger? I need some feedback, some jaunty bons mots. Something.
I have gotten comments from nobody. This includes my husband, the man whose clothes I wash. And Tizzed, whose clothes I would wash if he wanted me to and he were here and there weren't too many. And my very own mother. I wouldn't wash her clothes, because she's incredibly fussy and wants them all on hangers as soon as they're done and none of the delicates can go in the dryer, but I'm filially pious in other ways. And yet there are no comments from any of you.
I give Evie a pass, because she's at a wedding and just started a new job and also seems to be embroiled in some Pilates thing. I also give Heather a pass, because if you publicly shame Heather, in a blog or elsewhere, you wind up like Russell Crowe in Gladiator where you come back to your house and it's been pillaged and your crops have been burnt and your wife and daughter are hanging from the doorway. But the rest of you get no pass.

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Tizzed: Cool! One more reason to visit Pittsburgh! Jess does my laundry! (Gimme a pass whydontcha! I just moved from DSL to modem. It's like waking up and relalizing I'm not a physics grad student, instead I work at Arby's...)

EOL: I certainly would have commented, Pumpkin, but I'm not yet finished buttoning all the buttons on my newly washed clothes.

EV: Yay, pass for me! I'm back now, and doing no pilates any time again soon. I am having serious problems getting my Palm to sync correctly, however, so that may take some time. You wash Robbie's clothes? You should reevaluate that arrangement asap before it becomes a snowball of resentment. I'm so serious.

Jess: He does all the cooking and, as a general rule, the grocery shopping, so I think it balances. I don't like toting the laundry back and forth from the laundry room, but I like putting it away, so this arrangement is OK with me. Not that I'll hesitate to use it for guilt inducement when I'm asking for blog comments... Have you ever done a spinning class? They have those at the JCC. I was thinking about taking one.

EV: Yes, I have done a spinning class. It is ballbusting. And crotch busting. It's one of those things you do, you bleed, and you say "you know, if I can get myself to do this a couple times a week I will be SO jacked." and then you never do it again. But hey, go for it.

Today was our big Strip District excursion. For those unfortunate souls out there who don't know what the Strip District is, it's several blocks of food stores (mostly Italian, but some Middle Eastern and Asian too), wholesalers, street vendors, and assorted random stores on the edge of the downtown area. I was excited to go (mostly because of an informal plan I'd worked up to eat prosciutto until I vomited), but I was even more excited to take Robbie there, because he'd never been and is the chief food buyer and preparer in our family.
We did pretty well, I think. We got all sorts of food, including quince jelly, a pound-and-a-half slab of parmesan, fresh mussels, some olives from a big bucket, and--this is my favorite--a roll of mozzarella, prosciutto, and basil that you slice and put on crackers. I don't know who the visionary was who thought of that, but it's pure genius. Robbie reports that his favorite part was the extremely authentic cheeses with intentional mold. Although those were impressive, I'd have to say my favorite was the older man we saw pushing a shopping cart full of assorted dirty blankets and clothes, dressed in a bikini top, matching hot pants, and high heels. But we just caught a fleeting glimpse of him.
Before we went to the Strip, we hit the estate sale a few blocks away from our house. It wasn't nearly as good as last week's--maybe we got there too late, but I suspect the people whose stuff was being sold were just too normal. There were no ties with images of the senior George Bush printed on them, for example, and no nutcrackers made to look like a woman's legs. It was all very tasteful and uninteresting.
OK, I think I'm going to go take a little nap before dinner. Taste-testing your way down four blocks of food stores is more tiring than you'd think. That, or some of the baklava was drugged.

After last night's editing extravaganza and consequent late bedtime, I expected to be in bed by now. However, it seems that sitting on the sofa surfing the web is nearly as restful as sleeping. I've been doing it for the past three hours, and I find myself lulled into a near-coma.
Today my mom and I went to the Butler County Public Library to look for information about her mother. I think most of you know this already, but my grandmother died right after my mother was born, and a few months before she died she found out that she'd been adopted. She didn't get a chance to try to find out who her birth family was, but over the years we've accumulated some information, including some adoption records with what looks like her birth name on it, and so we went to see what we could find. The good news, I suppose, is that her family seems to have been a pretty big and interesting one--there are dozens of people with her not-super-common birth last name (Borland), and they seem to have been in the county for the past 200+ years---so once we figure out where she plugs into it, it should be neat to learn about them. But we don't know yet where she fits in. The information we have has that name, that her father was a farmer and her mother was a college-educated teacher, and that they both had Wassermann tests (so I figure they were probably married, and not that they were just freestyle VD-testing). It's a good start, and we had some more ideas today, but no breakthroughs.
Instead of a breakthrough, I had a little one-woman intervention with my mother about her key ring. She has eleven keys on it (not counting the car keys), and she knows what two of them are for (office and suitcase). I know what you're thinking--you're thinking, how does she get into the house? Garage door openers, that's how. Some of the nine unidentified keys may be house keys, but it's not clear. We agreed that it would be a worthwhile project to get rid of some keys, but I'm a little worried that the next time I see her she'll have a big mace-type sort of garage-door opener ring instead, with nine or ten unidentified garage door openers all strung along. You never know.
Tomorrow we're going to the Strip District, and possibly to estate sales in the morning, and then maybe to see a movie in the evening (I'm thinking Matchstick Men, Robbie's thinking that Once Upon A Time In Mexico one). Sunday we'll try to work off some of our Strip District poundage by joining the gym (yes, the membership office is open Sundays, but they are quite emphatically not open tomorrow), and then I think one of my friends from high school is coming over for dinner, or we're going out.
By the way, at the risk of either jinxing it or disagreeing with Ted, I think this week's Homestar Runner is pretty funny. Definitely an improvement from the past couple weeks--well, this whole summer really.

So it's 1:30 here, and I just finished a six-page editing test for a freelance job that I started at 9:30. What's the normal page count for a freelance editor in a week? Maybe 200? That sounds reasonable. The normal work week is 120 hours long, after all.
Actually, the real problem tonight was that it was a piece with lots of medical jargon (reasonable enough, since it's medical editing), and the medical dictionary I was to use took forever to load on our dial-up connection, and kept crashing. I'd say waiting for that thing was at least two hours of the past four. Thankfully, we'll be getting DSL next Friday, so if I do get any work from these people, it won't be a problem again. I think I did well on the tests, but I don't really know the caliber of applicants they normally get, so I'd describe myself for now as cautiously optimistic.
Cautiously optimistic, and really really sleepy. The thrill of learning about the causes of cough (actually, it was pretty interesting, more so than you'd think) for the past few hours kept me going, but now I think it's to bed with me. Tomorrow my mom and I are going on an ancestor hunt, a thing I meant to tell you all about but don't think I will now because I really want to go to sleep. Anyhow, the takeaway for now is that I have to be at her place at 9:30, and I'd prefer not to fall asleep on the drive over there. So I'll have to write a bigger, better, more coherent blog entry tomorrow.

We've registered our car. I know I talk about Pennsylvania like it's all a land of sweetness and light, but car registry in this state is one of the most annoying governmental processes I've gone through, far worse than anything the state of California ever managed to throw my way. We got the car insured on Monday, then today after work (well, Robbie worked, and I worked on my book in Oakland) we trundled off to the AAA to register it. However, we discovered that the AAA closest to us (and across the street from Whole Foods, just to add a little locational perspective to the whole thing) is only open from 9 to 5, so we zoomed off to the AAA in the 'burbs where I grew up, which is open until 8. I navigated on the fly through such notable neighborhoods as Friendship, Bloomfield (home to a store advertising dresses "from bambinos to brides"), and Millvale, with only a few close calls and one disgruntled truck driver (hey, he did look like he was going to be making a left).
(This AAA schedule is really a masterpiece of planning, by the way. One of these locations is close to lots of working people and busy young urban hipsters, and the other is in the land of soccer moms. Why arrange it this way? Why?)
The AAA lady rejected the little etching that the state of Pennsylvania requires you to make of your VIN plate (she wanted to reject adding me to the title, too, and our California registration, but the more competent AAA lady next to her intervened both times), so we set off cruising McKnight Road, the main drag of my youthful neighborhood, for a state inspection facility that was open that late to verify the VIN. After several exciting U-turns in dealership lots, we finally found a Ford dealership that does service until 11 at night, and the mechanic came out, peered at the car, said something along the lines of "yup, that's your VIN all right," and signed off on our registration. It was one of those classic types of annoying experience: painless by the end, but also completely pointless as far as we could see.
After another half-hour of paperwork back at the AAA, we were off to dinner at Applebee's, because when you're in our new neighborhood you eat at classic Italian pizzerias and sleek sushi restaurants, and when you're in my old neighborhood, well, you eat at Applebee's. Robbie and I defied gender stereotypes, him with his delicate Oriental salad and me with my plate of ribs, we stopped at Shop 'n' Save for Crisco and cooking wine for the steaks Robbie wants to make tomorrow (I suspect but am not sure that this order is what led our checkout boy to tell us a story involving K-Y jelly, a cucumber, and some raw beef), and then it was home again.
Other stuff happened today too, but all of it was more pleasant than AAA, and today I feel like giving you all the gift of schadenfreude. I will throw in as an upbeat closer, though, that Whole Foods is quite nice, and although most of it is overpriced, the space Indian food is cheaper there than at Giant Eagle (more expensive than at TJ's, though). I especially liked the sign that said, "We use our bread slicer on both organic and conventional breads. To preserve the organic integrity of your bread, you may wish to slice it at home."

Who's the bad girl who applied for three jobs today? Aww yeah. That's right. I have, I believe, five more that I still need to apply for, but it's a start. Some of these eight I'm pretty excited about, and some not so much, but I figure one of the following things will happen for each of the ones I'm not excited about: I won't hear back; I will hear back, and decide I want it after all during the interview; or I will hear back, decide it really doesn't look good after the interview, but get to freshen up my interviewing skills. None of these alternatives is bad.
In addition to submitting my applications, I moved some furniture around, unpacked a little bit, and let the plumber in to replace our bathtub faucet. Not a riveting day by any means, but productive. I moved the bookcase and kitchen cabinet to their new locations, and they look pretty good. I had an urge to unpack books onto the bookcase, both because I really want to see how it looks full of books and because I'm tired of all the books we have lying around, but I think any books I put in there now will get welded onto the shelves. They seem dry, but if I put pressure on them there's sort of a crustal shift and my finger sinks into the polyurethane a little bit. So I suppose that's a thrill I'll have to save for another day.
I've noticed that the news is both more interesting here than in Santa Barbara and a bigger deal (although part of this perception may be that I only get network television channels right now). On the CBS affiliate, there are three hours of local news, from 4 to 7 in the evening, and then the regular network news. The big story around here right now is the miraculous recovery of a kind of dishy 17-year-old girl who got struck by lightning last week and had her heart restarted by an equally dishy 17-year-old boy passing by who knew how to use a defibrillator. It's a real Sleeping Beauty for our times, and the news keeps replaying the moment when she saw him (for the first time that she can remember, since she was out cold when he restarted her heart) at her recovery party and gave him a big hug. He looked pretty psyched. The other big stories are as follows: a man who got trapped in a bathtub for six days and was eventually rescued by his dog, a dead body that a local TV reporter found in his backyard, and a woman who hit her husband with a ham. It's not bigger news, but it's definitely better news. And of course, there's the ongoing Erie bank robbery story. The news channels around here have taken unspoken sides about what they think happened: the CBS affiliate keeps interviewing experts who think he acted alone, but the NBC affiliate interviews experts who favor the innocent-pawn theory. Excessive static stops me from seeing what side the ABC affiliate is on.
I think tonight is the big Whole Foods excursion. I'll give a full report tomorrow. My mom and her friends really like it, but I'm skeptical that it could be better than TJs. This weekend we're going to the Strip District, though, and I know that that's better than TJs, so I suppose I have that to fall back on.

Comments
Robbie: The weather is also more important here. It's less of the sunny-your-next-weather-report-will-be-in-four-days variety. Even when it is sunny, we get the weather from "STORM TEAM 11". Its like the fantastic four, only for weather.

Matthew Lippert: You've really got to wait for the urethane to dry, although 24 hours should be ok. And comparing Whole Food and TJ's is realy apples and oranges.

Heather: Go you, you bad girl! I hope you find something good.

tizzed: Yeah, comparing TJs to Whole Foods is like comparing apples to oranges.. Or more specifically, Oranges to whte nectarines. One of them is a whooooole lot better, but also a whooooole lot more expensive

EV: For those interviews, wear something low-cut.

Jess: What was the name we had for that shirt of yours, the wraparound one? The Hello Breasts shirt, or something? Maybe I should wear one of those.

Well, the other bank at the end of our street got robbed today. This is the third bank robbery at the end of our street in a week--apparently I missed one that happened last Tuesday. I find this especially remarkable because there are only two banks down there. Oh well. Neither of them is ours (although that one's just down the next block, so I'm sure it's just a matter of time). I would like to amend my previous statement to add that while the Great Sovereign Bank Robbery of 1997 is still the single most impressive bank robbery that I've been in the vicinity of, this is by far the most impressive bank robbery streak.
Today I called the Jewish Community Center to sign up for our one-week free trial membership, and I was extremely and unaccountably amused by the fact that they answer the phone "Shalom, Jewish Community Center." There's nothing whatsoever funny about this--it's a perfectly legitimate way for a Jewish community center to answer their phone--but still, there it was. I think it's because I'd kind of been wondering what the first sign would be that I wasn't, you know, totally their target population, and blam, there it was, right off the bat. Still, I held myself together and managed to leave a message for the member relations lady to call me back, which she never did. I think she knew.
On the other hand, tonight we went out to dinner and the kid at the table next to us said, "Dad, at Hannah's bat mitzvah can I be the best man?" So at least I'm a little ahead of that guy, Jewish-theologically speaking. But he was maybe six.
Tonight we were going to go make the scene at Whole Foods, but I seem to have been struck by some unpleasantry (possibly because all I consumed all day were homemade Oreos and polyurethane fumes), so I think we're staying in. Maybe tomorrow.

Comments
Heather: Oooooh, jessicos? I'm sorry they made you sick, but I'm now feeling quite nostalgic...

Jess: Yup, jessicos indeed. My mom made them. I really, really don't feel like eating any now, but I'm sure I'll live to eat the rest of them tomorrow.

EV: Don't worry Jess, you know you pass. You were after all embraced by Robbie's extended family as only the second Jew to become a Sedgewick.

tizzed: I don't think that there's a coincidence between where you live and the bank robberies. What do you think Robbie and I did when we "played golf"? Actually played golf? Ha.

If this entry is incoherent, it's because I'm sitting in my living room, and therefore high as a kite on Minwax Wood Stain. Wait till tomorrow, when I break out the polyurethane and things really start to come off the rails.
Today was productive but uneventful. I stained the bookcase and the kitchen cabinet, and then we went to dinner at my parents' house. Last week Dottie went a little ballistic at the thought of people using butter instead of margarine (yep, I'm the guilty party who sparked this tirade by accepting my mother's offer of butter), and went on for a half-hour about how butter is too expensive, and also not real butter anymore, and how she'd like to see a debate between a farmer boy and a man who makes what they purport to be butter these days. We tried to read her the ingredients on the butter package ("ingredients: heavy cream and natural flavorings"), but she wasn't buying it. Anyhow, I was worried that this week would bring a repeat performance, but fortunately we all had a fairly normal conversation. And there was some really excellent prosciutto.
OK, I'm going to go put on my staining clothes and put another coat of stain on the bookcase. The kitchen cart is just the right color, and looks great, but the bookcase has some iffy spots.

Comments
Robbie: Alder takes color better then birch, for those of you keeping score at home.....

Julie: Have you considered using acrylic paint? I have painted various furniture in best-forgotten loud colors and prints. S'fun. And if you have better taste than 17 year-old me, it can be real classy.

Matthew Lippert: I agree on the Alder. Pine, on the other hand...

Jess: Acrylic paint, eh? I hadn't considered that, but now I do remember that you were doing a lot of furniture painting before you started college (I seem to remember a chair covered in pears, or something?) Describe to me the technique. It's too late for this stuff, but I plan to go to the unfinished wood store as much as possible in the future.

Good things that happened today: we got a really nice wooden kitchen cart and bookshelf at an unfinished furniture store, and a cheap (and not at all blindingly ugly) bathroom cabinet at Target, and my parents said they would buy my car. I'll miss my car, but I really don't need it, and I suppose I can visit it whenever I get the urge to. Also, we got our ATM cards, which is excellent because we had one dollar and some change left between the two of us.
Bad things that happened today: I burned my fingers twice, in two entirely separate incidents, while making breakfast. First I burned my left index finger on the frying pan. That was just dumb luck, my hand being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Then, when I was pouring the last of the coffee into my mug, I put two fingers of my right hand down on the hot plate of the coffee maker. I could actually hear flesh sizzle, which I have to say was ever so slightly cool. My fingers are still kind of numb, though, and they're looking a little blistery, and also, it was blindingly stupid. A little while after that, I remembered that I'd woken up in the middle of the night with a two-word phrase in mind and thought, "That's the right title for my book." Naturally, I remember everything about this incident except what the two words were. It's possible that I was only half awake and thinking of something nonsensical like "Shells & Cheese" or "Butterfly McQueen," but since I remember very consciously thinking that it wasn't perfect, but was better than anything else I'd come up with and so I ought to use it, I think I was thinking rationally.
On the way to the unfinished furniture place, we took a little detour and went to see my father's parents' old house. I could navigate for a little while by memory, but the actual neighborhood is pretty uniform architecturally, so I couldn't remember the right places to turn after a while and had to rely on a map. I realized that this kind of neighborhood is what people are talking about when they say Pittsburgh is an impossible city to drive in. Ridiculously steep hills, intersections totally lacking signage, roads that turn into staircases, it's got it all. There were also several streets that looked like they continued on the map but didn't, and their inverse, streets that clearly were broken into two noncontiguous sections on the map (so that I would plan out complicated multi-turn detours to get us to the other section of the street) but were actually continuous as can be. I suspect Robbie was less than charmed, between my shrieking and all the stop signs where he had to accelerate while letting out the brake in order to avoid smacking the car behind us, but he was polite.
At Target we were in line behind a girl who I suspect was starting college and her mother. I don't know why they delighted me so much, but they did. The girl was buying outrageous amounts of leopard-print decor--a leopard-print bed-in-a-bag, two leopard-print throw blankets, and some leopard-print pillows. I think I may have even seen a leopard-print picture frame. She was extremely pleased with her purchase. As for her mother, I think she had either never been in a large store before or had never been involved in a retail transaction with an African American, because whenever our checkout guy spoke to her she looked around befuddledly and said some variation on "Oh my goodness," as if he, or possibly I, were about to jump her and steal her daughter's leopard-print. We saw them leaving, and I wanted to tail them, but Robbie sensibly directed us towards Lowe's to buy wood stain instead. Also, while we were waiting in line behind the leopard people, the checkout girl in the next line over was getting in an altercation about the attitude of eight young women who, I believe, came in on the Chatham College shopping shuttle. So it was a delightful excursion all around. The unfinished wood store was good too, and I like what we bought, but it awakened a lust in my heart for unfinished wood products, a lust I can't possibly afford. The wood is so velvety, though, and it has so much potential. How can I resist?
I'll leave you with the following gem from tonight's broadcast of "Funniest Game Show Moments Part 4" (tonight was not a PBS night, clearly):
"Family Feud" host: During what month of pregnancy does a woman start to show?
Contestant: September.

Comments
EV: Unfinished wood furniture is slightly akin to crack, yes.

tizzed: I love those funniest game show moments. Like the time on the British version of Family Feud the guy answered 'turkey' to all 5 questions in the lightning round. And the rest of the family was pissed... Or that other game show with rebus puzzles, and the puzzle looked a guy masturbating to a snake... Where's the strangest place you've made whoopee?

Adam: Did you ever see that Seinfeld where it wakes up in the middle of the night with a joke, writes it down and then can't read his handwriting? Unless I'm mistaken, it's also the one with the Drake's coffee cake.

Jess: Is that the one where they all say "Love the Drake! Love the Drake!"? I remember that part, but not the rest of the episode.
But yeah, it was like that...

Adam: Naw, that's a different one. You're thinking of the one where they buy a TV for their friend Drake that's getting married.

Huzzah! Now I have internet in my very own apartment. It's dial-up for now, although we're going to switch to DSL, and so it's kind of slow. But I'll take it.
We don't have cable yet (have you seen the ad where Comcast says "Order today, watch tomorrow"? It's a lie. "Order on the 4th, watch on the 16th," more like) and the only station we get very well is PBS, although NBC is sometimes passable also. I think all this watching PBS is good for us. So far this week we've learned about the potato famine, the roots of what they think is AIDS immunity, flea markets, and the Pittsburgh bar in DC. Frank DeCaro showed up in the middle of the flea market show, completely unheralded, camping it up as some other guy's fabulous sidekick. Robbie and I sat there in front of the TV, jaws agape. I think it would be better for us to just never get cable at all, but then, a little City Confidential never hurt nobody.
Tonight we went out for pizza. It was cheap, tasty, and accompanied by pop, not soda. I was happy as a clam. When we were walking down the street to this pizza place, we passed by two others we want to try, so pretty soon I'll be ready to make a detailed comparative report. Lucky you.
The bank at the bottom of our street got robbed yesterday. It sounds like an amateurish job, and definitely ranks at the bottom of bank robberies I've been in the vicinity of (which is to say, below the Great Sovereign Bank Robbery of 1997). Apparently it was a father-son team. Robbie and I speculated that they came up with the idea during one of those awkward male-male silences. Kind of like how some fathers and sons golf, or work on cars. Then there was that father-son pair that assaulted the umpire last year, which I guess is the closest analog to this situation.
I did laundry today, and since I'm not working this was the crowning achievement of the day (well, that and taking down the broken Venetian blind, but that was twenty seconds of vigorous effort and not a multi-hour marathon like the laundry was). I like our laundry room. It's just the basement of our neighbors' house, and it's small, and it smells like a basement, but you get a feeling like you're doing laundry at your grandma's house (if your grandma lived in a big old house, which neither of my grandmas did) and it's cozy. I also like that you have to kind of hurl yourself against the door to open it, and that to see in the laundry room you have to pull a series of dangling cords to light up your path, and that everyone leaves their detergent next to the washers. It's friendly. Mildewy, but friendly.
Robbie points out, slightly disapprovingly, that this is going to be a long blog entry. He's kind of a buzzkill sometimes, but he's been out of sorts ever since he discovered that in Pennsylvania liquor stores don't sell beer, so I'll give him a little leeway, and sign off and go back to watching an Indian woman with a Ph.D. in physics and what seems to me like an outrageously large forehead dot discuss subcontinental water rights. PBS is fantastic.

Comments
Robbie: Yeah, it's like your grandma's house, if your grandma charged a buck to do laundry.....

tizzed: 1) I saw that antique show on PBS, too. I was waiting for the show to turn into queer like folk meets antiques road show. Again, is anyone that suprised that DeCaro likes antiquing?
1a) PBS sucks. Except for the electric company...
2) Pennsylvania must be the biggest bank robbery state in the Union. Did the guy have a bomb strapped to him?
3) Those Ligue guys were loaded

EV: I liked that The Great Sovereign Bank Robbery involved helicopters flying over our dorm. That didn't happen very much.

Jess: I also liked that I called Public Safety to ask why we were being surrounded by helicopters and why prox cards had come on three hours early, and was told, "There was an incident. With some escaped criminals. We think it's fine now."

Matthew Lippert: Courtney and I were having a debate recently about whether Pittsburgh was really the midwest. The existance of pop definitively cinches it for the affermative.