I just got back from an extremely, extremely vexing car-repair experience, marking possibly the first time in my life I was certain that someone was trying to rip me off because of my gender, and I'm so full of hate right now, just like Ethel was this time last year at the nuns, but I've decided that I should make lemonade out of the lemons I'd vastly prefer to stuff into the tailpipes of the personal cars of the auto workers at the place I went, and so I would like to give the following recommendation to anyone who might find my site by Googling reputable, honest, good, reliable, extremely cheap car repair performed by decent human beings in Pittsburgh: Krischco in Ingomar, (412) 364-2625. I didn't go there today, because our car was having a brake problem and I was afraid to drive all the way out there, but I should have risked it: the only thing that makes me feel worse than the amount of money I gave to the slack-jawed, oily-mannered yokels at the place I went today was that I did not give that money to the excellent people at Krischco. (Krischco is the place that charged me $4.56 to change the hubcaps on my car in April, for any of you who remember that.) So go there yourself and all will be right again with the world.

It's the end of August and I have a message tonight for the youth of America, a message I've inadvertently been working on more or less all summer, so listen up, Clark: there will be a point in your early twenties when you look around at the friends you've amassed, in high school and college and on street corners and wherever, and you'll think to yourself with satisfaction, "Hey, these people aren't crazy! We have a lot in common and we'll always be friends!" You will congratulate yourself for your discerning eye: other people have friends who cause their own problems, friends who screw things up irrevocably, but you don't. For the first time in your life, everyone will understand you when you say what's really on your mind. You will go to many weddings in pretty or handsome clothing and drink too much to drive home, but not so much that you make a fool of yourself. You will buy a lot of wrapping paper.

My message is: enjoy it. A few years later everyone you know will start reaching their hands into a Great Big Hat of Screw-Up and Weird and pulling something out. (And have you, also, pulled something out that you just don't know about but that everyone else can see is screwed-up or weird? Maybe you have. Odds are.) Everything you used to sit around and laugh about other people doing, someone very dear to you will do. And here's a suggestion: before any of this happens, sit down and make a list of who's most likely to spend their savings one night in Vegas, who's most likely to commit statutory rape with someone who looked eighteen, who's most likely to become a rabid supporter of the other political party, who's most likely to take up sport hunting, and then wad your list up and throw it out the window, because it's all, as near as I can tell, entirely random. That's the most disconcerting thing about it, that you can't predict anything about anyone anymore, and if you can't predict anything, how are you ever supposed to open your mouth and say what you're thinking? It's like being in a swimming pool you've been in a hundred times before and swimming to where you know you can stand up, but then stretching out your feet and finding that, nope, there's no bottom there.

Thus endeth the end-of-summer lesson for 2004. And that's all I have to say about my day, really, except that everyone should go read the latest entry on Blogatron (August 30, in case a new one gets posted). If I may say so, Hilatron's genius posts are the most geniusy of any blog writer I read.

Quilt

And here is the quilt top. I think it might be slightly too large, because I have this problem where I can't stand asymmetry and as it turns out, queen beds are not really square. It should get a little smaller when I quilt it, though I daresay not enough to be noticeable. I still like it a lot, though.

I would also like to apologize for the compositional techniques that were blatantly not applied in this photo, the lack of which would make my mother-in-law cry, were she at all prone to crying, which I believe she isn't. I especially apologize for the iron cord visible in the lower right corner of the photo.

It's thunderstorming violently outside, so I'm crammed into the space between the bed and the closet, waiting to die. You'd think that having our house more or less directly struck by lightning both yesterday and today would have desensitized me a bit, but it seems not. Today I did stop myself from screaming at the top of my lungs, though, so I suppose that's progress.

Moving on, today I finished the top of my quilt. My sewing machine stopped working abruptly today, and I wasn't sure what the problem was (I can't find the manual, which makes troubleshooting a hit-or-miss affair), but Robbie looked some stuff up on the Internet and figured out that my tension was wrong and how to fix it, so I was back in business. I took some pictures that I'd love to show you, but unfortunately I neglected to bring the digital camera with me into my foxhole, so you're all just going to have to wait until tomorrow. It's nice, though. I started on the back, which shouldn't take long at all, and then I'll rivet it sometime this week.

And then tonight we went out to dinner with my parents at this restaurant on the South Side called Old Europe, which serves all sorts of southeastern European food. I have to admit that eating a Bulgarian meal had never been high on my list of things to do, but this was awfully good. We had a sort of fetakopita (I think that's not the right word, but maybe some of you know what I mean)-type appetizer, and then some various dips and pita, and then I had a Bulgarian casserole thing, and then I had Bulgarian apple strudel. Those Bulgarians know how to eat.

I know I say this so often as to strain my credibility, but tonight I experienced the culminating, uh, experience of my life. It happened after Robbie and I went exploring on the Montour Trail, which is this rail-to-trail bike and walking trail that goes for 40 miles or so to the south and west of the city. And that was all well and good, especially when we passed by the dive-iest bar I've ever seen, far, far, dive-ier than the Ganny, dive-ier than The Falls, so dive-y that I was afraid to try to take its picture. That was good. But the highlight came when, after our walk, Robbie and I were trying to find the Steak'n'Shake that we had coupons for, and we got lost in some huge new sprawling strip mall complex, and then, like a shining city on the hill, a Fatburger appeared before us. Yes, that's right, a Fatburger. They're moving east (and there was a really excellent sign in the lobby that said "This is the only thing of substance ever exported from LA."). We ate there, and it was as fantastic as we'd remembered. Now if we could only get an In'n'Out...

Today I also finished my quilt squares, and now I'm in the middle of pinning them together. I think I may get the whole top done this weekend. I find that with quilts, the first part always takes much, much longer than I expect it to, and then big parts come together very quickly at the end. I want to have it ready to start quilting by the time it gets cold--there's not much point in finishing the other steps before then, because I'm not going to sit under a quilt quilting in eighty-degree weather.

And in other news, you can now buy corned bison in our neighborhood. I'm convinced that this is truly the best of all possible worlds.

Today was fairly dull. I worked a bit until I lost my access to the Internet source I needed (the site license I have access to allows only one user at a time, and someone else grabbed it while I was eating lunch), let the plumber in next door, ran a variety of dull but necessary errands, had a snack with my mom, came home, went to the gym, cut some coupons, ate a hot dog, and now here I am, watching the springboard diving. I think my fear of diving enhances my enjoyment of the diving competition. It seems so reckless and daring.

So, as I've mentioned to some of you, when I became apartment manager I inherited a large and inchoate ring of keys, mostly unlabeled, with a few mislabeled ones mixed in. This offends my sense of order, so I've been trying to organize them bit by bit. Tonight I set out to label the front-door keys for all the buildings. On the way, I ran into our downstairs neighbors, who are kind of cryptic--I've seen their mail, and in the laundry room I've folded their clothes, so I feel like I know them, and at least theoretically we should be great pals. They support public radio, they enjoy cooking and wine, they wear clothes like ours, they receive alumni mailings from elite institutions of higher learning--what's not to like? And I suspect they feel the same about us, but we seem to be suffering from a mutual lack of friendly chemistry, and so I'm always a little nervous when I bump into them. Still, though, I asked myself "What would Shemor do?," and then I successfully asked them if I could go try keys in their door, and so now the keys are, euhh, 66% labeled. Plus all the front doors. So 75% overall. Every day, in every way, I'm becoming a better and better small-complex apartment manager.

I have also begun a surprise for one of my blog readers. I choose not to reveal which one, but will say that any blog reader who thinks it might be them is wrong (so, not you, Heather, and not my brothers-in-law whose birthday is coming up, and so forth). It is for a dark-horse surprise candidate. I'm quite excited.

This morning was my dentist appointment, and it went fine. Because this place has a strange policy of doing the exam and cleaning separately for new patients, I didn't actually see the dentist this time, and just had my cleaning with the hygienist. Her name was also Jessica, and naturally, that was the conduit for the meager small talk that we made. Mostly we talked about how we don't like being called "Jessie" (well, to be fair, it was her saying "I've never really liked that nickname" and me saying "I hate it, and I've never, ever, liked anyone who's called me that, and I can tell right off the bat when I'm going to completely loathe someone because they call me 'Jessie' and it just makes my blood boil and I realize right away that they have no soul," and then her sticking things in my mouth to get me to shut up). We also discussed zodiac signs briefly--she is on the cusp, and she said as a child she was always confused, was she a Cancer or was she a Leo, what was she, and I think even she realized that that line of conversation was sort of pushing it, because that marked the end of the small talk and from that point on we just talked about my retainer.

And then I worked, and then tonight I made a family survival plan. Don't worry, I'm not all duct-taping the windows or anything, but I never bothered to store drinking water in California where everyone says you should because of earthquakes, and I've felt sort of guilty about that ever since, so every so often now I decide that I should write down what we would need to hold us for a week or so in case the power goes out because of tornadoes or something (this actually did happen when I was a kid here, although it was only out for about four days). Then I tend to lose interest. Anyhow, I found a list on the internet tonight and it seemed pretty good, although I did take the liberty of deleting the camp stove and fuel, since it seems to me that it's far more likely that the camp stove fuel will accidentally blow up in the basement than that we'd ever need to hunker down and use it, so it seems like a net negative, survival-wise. I totally plan to get reflective NASA blankets, though. Think how much fun those would be at parties.

And now I'd like to take this opportunity to tell you all my favorite commercial from this year's Olympic Games, which is the series, I think by Nike, of little girls transforming into Olympic athletes as they do various quasi-athletic things. I love these. My favorite is the one with the little girls who transform into Serena Williams and the cute tennis coach, but they're all good. I saw one today with a musician (a violinist, I believe) hurrying to make a performance, but the musician was a guy, and somehow that just wasn't as effective for me. I think the music on the tennis one is what really does it. Well, and the simpering.

Today was more productive than yesterday, at least. I got up and worked for several hours first thing, and I've noticed that that has the interesting side effect of motivating me to do other non-work things efficiently during the rest of the day, in addition to just inherently being worthwhile. So I worked, and then I worked on the quilt, and then Robbie came home and we went to the gym, where I performed excellently on the elliptical. I hadn't been since before the Olympics, so I was sort of hoping that they'd installed some uneven parallel bars or something in the interim, but evidently not.

Tomorrow I have a dentist appointment, a thing I don't mind except for the small talk. And actually, the small talk is really at a minimum at the dentist's, I suppose, although I'm also not looking forward to getting up early. I have big plans to go to the bank after my appointment and get quarters, however--I have the motivation to go to the bank surprisingly rarely considering it's two short blocks away, so it goes better when I'm walking past it anyhow--and that should be pretty exciting.

Oh, and can someone tell me whatever I should already know about Liz Phair? I've heard one of her songs somewhere recently (fine, it was a music video set to "Coupling" footage) and I liked it. Does she have many good songs and, if so, what are they? I'm about a decade behind here, aren't I?

Well, we're home now. The rest of our vacation was just as rocking as we'd come to expect. On Saturday we went to the Fools Rules Regatta and watched a sort of sad family try to build a boat for about an hour and then give up and disassemble it with a cordless drill. Then we had lunch at the yacht club, where I had a BLT (for those of you keeping score at home, that was our third meal at the yacht club and my second BLT of the week), and then we made desserts all afternoon in anticipation of the lobster dinner that night. We also each selected a lobster buddy (since 11 people had to split six lobsters--although they were large lobsters, it wasn't like we were the cast of "Oliver" or anything), but then Robbie's mom predivided the lobsters before they reached the table and so we were able to abandon our pretense of cooperation. Then we ate lobsters, ate dessert, and took a series of birthday photos for Robbie's cousin in New Zealand. I'm excited to report that our giving-the-camera-the-finger rate was less than 1.2%.

Then yesterday we got together with some of Robbie's family for lunch (where I had another BLT), and then we took off for the airport in the afternoon. The flight back was fine--as I said to Heather, we've gotten so used to five-hour flights back and forth to California that any hour-long flight just can't be that bad. Then we discovered that our car battery was dead, but fortunately the long-term airport parking had a service that came to jump us, and I think we lost about five minutes total because of the battery. We think we left the light on, so as much as I'd like to blame it all on our rotten car, I think I can't.

And today I was basically a non-starter. I monitored the Internet closely, and I got outbid for some rag rug strips on eBay, and that was pretty much it until Robbie got home and we went bike shopping for him. We drove out to a bike shop in Ambridge, which some of you will remember as Aliquippa's swank Croatian cousin, and Robbie talked to the guy there for quite a while, and then we went to another bike shop near where I grew up. Then we went to a Japanese restaurant that turned out to be Benihana-style, which was a bit of a surprise, and then we got groceries, and now here we are. And now I'm going to take the recycling out to the curb.

I'm going to take the past few days out of chronological order because I need to report the most exciting thing that's happened to me ever, which is that this morning, not only did I beat Adam, AJ, and Robbie at mini-golf, and not only did I win a free Italian ice because of my hole-in-one, but I got my name on the Zoomz Mini-Golf record board. You can see photographic proof of that here (it's the last photo, and you have to squint a bit to read it, but it's undeniably there).

Back to yesterday, Robbie and I went to Crosswinds Traders, where I got a skirt, a pair of pants, and a very soft sweater that I've been wearing ever since, for an extremely economical price that I don't remember at the moment. Less than $50, though, definitely. Then we went to dinner at the yacht club, and I'm saddened to report that my summer prediction #3 came untrue. I mean, the actual event was quite nice, but I was hoping to go three for three.

And then Adam, Robbie, and I hit the Ganny with Adam's friend Michael, who some of you will remember from our wedding band. I have to say, it was pretty rocking, especially the part where the bartendress was too drunk to find the birthdate on my ID, and Michael and I had a spirited discussion about whether "I'm Goin' Down" is a depressing song. Thoughts? We reached an impasse pretty quickly and I'd be interested to hear what other people have to say. Then we came home, the toilet overflowed, and we all went to bed.

And then today I became locally famous for my athletic skills, and then I helped clean out the hall closet, and then we ate Mexican food, and then Robbie and I went to the airport to pick up Brett and his girlfriend Amy, who are here for the weekend, and now we're sitting around. I think something might be going on later, but I don't know what it is, which may, alarmingly, mean that I'm not going.

I'm in the piano room again. Everyone else is watching Hellboy, which I didn't dislike but found a little too slimy, so I decided to blog instead.

Monday night we went to the Red Sox game, which they won, and we ended up being pretty happy with our limited-visibility seats because we were under another tier and it rained for most of the game. I rode to and fro with Robbie's dad, AJ, Clark, and, most importantly, AJ's iPod, and it was pretty rocking. We rotated picking songs, and a good time was had by all. I even got to explain the story of the Simon and Garfunkel song "The Only Living Boy in New York" to the rest of the car, who, I must say, were indifferent to the point of coma. I felt I could really relate to my father at that moment.

Then yesterday Clark left, and then Robbie's aunt and uncle and cousin left, and then we went sailing. I think one of these summers I'm going to have to suck it up and learn something about boats, because although I enjoy the middle part when we're out on the boat sailing along, I always feel like a bit of an idiot when we're starting or finishing because I don't know what to do with the sail or the ropes and I end up feeling large and in the way. And, because it's sailing, everything has a funny name and I'm never even reliably sure that I'm looking in the right direction at whatever part of the boat is being discussed, let alone having any idea what to do with it. The yacht club should really teach an in-law class. Only maybe less degrading than in "My Fair Lady."

Today I tried out Robbie's mom's vacuum cleaners because I'm thinking that instead of the Dyson I linked to, I may want the kind she has (Miele), and before you make any Tom-Sawyer-and-the-fence comparisons, I did, in fact, come up with this idea of my own accord. I like both of hers so much better than the one we have now that although I'm not sure which I'll pick, I don't think I can make a bad choice--plus they're actually both cheaper than the Dyson. Then we went to look at a log, and then AJ, Adam, Robbie, and I had dinner with Robbie's cousin Colin at a burger place. (Actually, they seem to specialize in burgers and vegan cuisine, which is pretty odd, but it was tasty.)

And now, Hellboy. One of the characters sounds, from two rooms away, a bit like Robbie's mother, and I keep wondering why she's talking so loudly in the middle of the movie. I think now I'm going to go read some of Delta Wedding, which I started yesterday. I'm only on the second chapter, but so far it's shaping up to be the perfect book to read here. What the protagonist thinks of her cousins more or less sums up what I think of my brothers-in-law, for example:

Once when Laura saw some old map on the wall, with the blowing winds in the corners, mischievous-eyed and round-cheeked, blowing the ships and dolphins around Scotland, Laura had asked her mother if they were India's four brothers. She loved them dearly. It was strange that it was India who had to be Laura's favorite cousin, since she would have given anything if the boy cousins would let her love them most. Of course she expected them to fly from her side like birds, and light on the joggling board, as they had done when she arrived, and to edge her off when she climbed up with them. That changed nothing.

Isn't that neat? Good old Eudora. Still, I think I liked The Optimist's Daughter a little better, although there wasn't anything especially fun about it.

Well, I'm sitting here in the piano room with AJ's friend Clark, with whom I'm formed a sort of informal fellowship. Clark sits at the desk with headphones on, IMing young women of his acquaintance and downloading videos of Japanese kids doing competitive DDR, and I sit on the sofa, checking my email (not that I've gotten any), and watching the downloaded DDR videos. Every so often, I explain to him the various historical anachronisms in the Animaniacs song "The Nations of the World." Anyhow, Clark was very flattered that I mentioned him last week, and I think he may be telling the young women of his acquaintance about his newfound web fame.

That's pretty much my vacation so far. It's chilly and rainy, so that part isn't great, but we've done some fun stuff anyhow. Saturday we got our Germany tickets--well, I guess that's not fun per se, but I'd started to spend pretty much all my waking hours worrying about it, so that was really a necessary step to my having fun at any point. Oh, and Evie came to visit, which was nice. We've also played a lot of Loob. Last night we nearly came to blows about the rules and decided to IM Chi to have him arbitrate, but he wasn't online, and the dance-off idea was also rejected, so the hostility has been simmering ever since. And last night we had dinner at the yacht club. As a group we distinguished ourselves because only one of the seven gentlemen in our party (Robbie's dad) was wearing both the required tie and the not-required-because-they-thought-they-didn't-have-to closed-toe shoes. Robbie's parents said that the worst thing that could happen because we didn't meet the dress code was that another yacht club member would file a complaint, and I think Adam is drafting one right now.

And that's pretty much it. I brought a lot of books to read, but mostly I've just been on the Internet and watching the Olympics instead. I think I had an idea that I'd sit out on the porch and bask in the sun while reading, but that's definitely not happening today.

Today I went into Oakland to do research for my freelance pieces, and it went fine, so Robbie and I knocked off a little early and tried to find the Panther Hollow trail, which runs through the part of Oakland named, predictably, Panther Hollow. We did pretty well on finding the trail, but we were expecting it to join up with other trails we'd recognize, and instead we wound up in Greenfield, which isn't so explanatory to most of you, but suffice it to say that we'd more or less missed our entire neighborhood and wound up on the wrong side of the Parkway, about two miles from and three hundred vertical feet below our apartment.

So that wasn't good, but we found a huge staircase, which we climbed, and then since we were doing much better altitude-wise, we stopped off at this bar in Upper Greenfield that I can highly recommend if you're ever in town, even though there were only about half a dozen people there and we were clearly the only people there who hadn't known each other since infancy, so there was a feeling like we'd showed up way too early at the party of a friend of a friend. Still, though, beers were a dollar. I think we caught some sort of happy hour that began when the steel mills closed in 1980.

And now I'm going to go pack. I just talked to Heather for an hour and a half, which was delightful as always, especially when we were talking about my research today into the Cadaver Synod, but now I think I really need to pack. We're leaving tomorrow afternoon and we'll be back on the 22nd, but I suspect I'll be checking in while we're in Rhode Island.

Unfortunately for all of you, the new guy who moved in today had no embarrassing traits that I noticed. He did, however, break the toilet within five minutes of moving in. Oh, sure, he says it was broken when he got there, and also that the sink stopper wasn't working, and also that the toilet seat had no hinges, but I think he just carried a few boxes up and then went on a drunken toilet rampage, like Keith Moon at the Holiday Inn. Anyhow, the plumber was summoned, and I think all is now well.

Otherwise, I worked and worked and got my actual assignment for the freelance I mentioned yesterday, and I showed my mother how to water my plants, and I watched the fifth episode of the fourth season of "Coupling." We're wrapping up the season tomorrow night, I think--Robbie suggested that we put off the last episode until we get back from Rhode Island, but after witnessing the strength of my response I don't think he'll be suggesting that ever again. We also have informal plans to go running tomorrow evening (well, I'd run and Robbie would rollerblade), but my legs are still so sore that I'm not sure it's possible. Going down stairs is still acutely painful, and sitting is a hit-or-miss affair. So we'll see.

Oh, and here's a question: how is it possible that we live in a neighborhood that supports, by my count, eight pan-Asianesque restaurants (with a ninth opening soon), but we were the only diners in the neighborhood's one Indian restaurant tonight? Their food is good, their location is reasonable, and their prices aren't outrageous. It's a travesty. And there should really be some sort of uberzoning that would bar this from our neighborhood until we got any sort of Mexican food whatsoever.

Well, I just got done watching a Very Special "Joe Schmo," and now I'm ready to tackle blogging for the night. I should be writing my freelance piece, which is due tomorrow, but I did a very good job on the first of three sections that I needed to write, and that's motivated me to do absolutely nothing on the other two sections for most of the day. I'm almost done with the second section now, though, and in a remarkable (and, I must say, rare) bit of foresight I saved the section I really wanted to write for tomorrow morning, so I think it'll be okay.

Oh, and I got a new writing assignment for the same product I was writing for a month or so ago, or at least I was sent a list of pieces to choose from. I'm not sure I'll get all the ones I wanted, and I'm feeling a little pinched for time, because they're due September 1, but still, it'll be nice to write some more of these pieces. I may be writing about a series of popes, and there's just nothing better than that.

And now it's back to the writing. Tomorrow someone new is moving in, and I'll try to notice all his quirks and write a full report for you. Also, I'll make a list of any amusing items I see him carrying into his place. I was thinking that I'll offer to help him to move, but my legs have felt like grim death all day today because of the running, so I really hope he doesn't take me up on it.

I think it's important to check up on my preferences every now and again, to make sure I haven't been pigeonholing myself out of habit, so tonight I went running. I've been feeling lately that this was necessary, because Heather and Helen and all sorts of people have been running all over the place, and I'm here to report that yes, I hate running as much as ever. However, it turns out that while I haven't gained a love for running since the last time I checked, I have gained a sort of sticktoitiveness, so I actually did okay--we went to the Eliza Furnace Trail, which is five miles back and forth, and I think I ran for about two of them. I was only breathing normally and reasonably happy for about one-sixteenth of those two miles, but you can't have it all.

Theoretically, though, I have to say I enjoyed the evening. There's something kind of inspiring about spending a pleasant summer's evening running alongside a busy highway downtown, next to the jail, while listening to "London Calling." I myself was not inspired at that point, because I was mostly wondering if there was anyplace where it would be socially acceptable for me to spit, but the concept seemed sound. (And I was certainly on board for the "zombies of death" part.) I think I'll go again. It's always hard to tell with me, but I think so.

Other than that, today I just finished my freelance piece and wrote an outline for my next freelance piece, due Wednesday. These pieces came up sort of unexpectedly, as I've mentioned, and so I've decided that with this windfall I'm going to buy this. It's been on my Amazon list for a while, but apparently no one thinks it makes an exciting enough gift, so I'm giving up and springing for it myself. Oh, and I inspected the apartment I told you about yesterday, and, much to my surprise, it was squeaky clean. The closets in that place are getting painted tomorrow morning at 8:30, and then that's that.

And now another weekend has come to an end. Friday's Tireless Friday was great--I was issued a pair of hip waders for the evening, and at first I was intimidated, but they changed my life. It was the closest I've been to having a superpower. I've spent the rest of the weekend trying to figure out other places I could legitimately need to wade in order to justify getting myself a set for personal use, but I couldn't come up with any. But I'll submit to you that there's nothing more sublime than standing in thirty inches of water at the outlet of Nine Mile Run on the Monongahela River on a sunny but suprisingly brisk summer evening, fighting with a duck over an old bag of Cheetos.

Then yesterday Robbie and I and my parents went to Ohio for my dad's open house at work. Heather and Megan know how rocking the last open house was five years ago, and I have to say that despite the lack of sinus simulators this year, this one was even more so. My dad snuck me in early to fly the flight simulator--I didn't really want to fly the flight simulator, but you know how dads are--and I have to say, it ended up being pretty neat, although my feet couldn't reach the pedals and I did get a bit sick towards the end. Robbie got to fly it too later on, and I stood behind him and made Top Gun jokes, and together the two of us were a real hit. Then we ate hot dogs and listened to a band of engineers play "Soul Man," and we saw my dad's office, and it was all quite nice.

Today I went for a walk, and now I'm just working on my freelance piece and dealing with apartment issues. This guy moved out last week and cleaned, he says, for several days, which is puzzling because his apartment is still filthy (there are beard clippings in the sink), and the new tenant is coming Thursday. The landlords, who are now on vacation, don't like to use cleaning services, so as you can imagine, we're in a bit of a pickle. Apparently if it's not clean by tomorrow evening we're hiring someone, but I'm not at all eager to see how the day tomorrow, when the old tenant says he's coming back to clean again, will play out. Frankly, I'd've hired a service right away--I've had cleaning charges deducted from security deposits before and I've never left anything in this sort of shape, and I never thought my landlords had done so unfairly--but it's not up to me, so that's OK.

Finally, it's come to my attention that some of you are concerned because while we're in Rhode Island, I'll be attending a Red Sox game with six male Sedgewicks and AJ's friend Clark, and so I'd like to make a public announcement: not to minimize the importance of the obviously ridonculous amounts of testosterone that will be coursing through the entire evening's festivities, but don't worry on my behalf--I think I'm going to be A-OK. Now, naturally it would be a different story if Brett were going to be there, since he and Clark would have to throw down and it would be on and they would get served and dance contest and so forth, but he won't, so there we are. And heaven knows I'd choose this any day over Robbie having younger sisters.

Actually, I'm getting pretty enamored of the idea of Brett and Clark having a dance contest. Any chance we could start a grass-roots movement here?

Well, I got my outline done and turned it in. It went okay--I still have a lot to write, but it's not due until Monday, so that's all right. I worked at sort of a fiftieth-percentile level today--I got some stuff done, a respectable amount, but not that much. I also made a lasagna and had an illuminating conversation about gallium arsenide with Heather.

Unfortunately, I'm feeling kind of drained right now. I need to write some more tonight and then I think it'll be an early night for me. Tomorrow we have another Tireless Friday (it'll be our last, since we'll be in Rhode Island for the next two and that's it for the summer), and that should be good. I also have plans to make maple buns. Dottie used to make them, and I think I can improvise a sort of recipe, but I just tried to Google maple buns and all I got were hits for some rabbit farm, which struck me as quite odd.

Well, the underwear excursion went fine. Underwear was purchased, we didn't get too rained-upon, and I taught my mother the word "buzzkill." I thought that was a word everyone just knew, but evidently not. Then I went grocery shopping, we had chicken and rice for dinner, and we watched the second episode of the fourth season of "Coupling." I'm liking this season. But then, I'm easy.

Oh, and here's a pop quiz for all of you: let's say you're driving on an interstate (freeway, autobahn) in the right-hand lane. A car with two attractive forty-three-year-old women is a bit in front of you. A large tractor-trailer begins to merge onto the freeway, well in front of you, about even with the car in front of you. What do you do?:

a) Remain in the right-hand lane. You are probably fine.
b) Get into the left-hand lane--better safe than sorry--but refrain from accelerating, because the car that was in front of you will probably want to switch lanes too.
c) Get into the left-hand lane, accelerate vigorously so that you draw even with the car that was in front of you, and then hang out there for a few seconds, bothering to accelerate again just as a third car comes up behind you in the left-hand lane, such that the car that was in front of you must cut the third car off by inches in order to avoid being turned into a pancake by the tractor-trailer.

If you picked (c), you aren't alone. And to the neutral-colored American car driving north on I-79 today, may I say, suck it.

Now I'm trying to get some work done on my freelance piece. I have an outline due tomorrow. Argh.

Today started with my first bona fide lockout. It was just as exciting as it sounds. Actually, I didn't technically have spare keys to this apartment (it's the old apartment of Dave the Key Man, and so he'd never bothered to put spare keys to his own apartment on the key ring), but I found a key to their back door, and the day was saved. It was challenging, but, as Heather pointed out, with great power comes great responsibility. And I got to meet a new tenant, and she's nice, so that was fun.

Other than that, I worked all day and did laundry. I got an additional freelance writing assignment, because they need another piece on the same topic as the piece I snapped up last week, so that's good. Next week is going to be busy, though. We're going to Rhode Island the week after that, so I want to work extra hours next week so I don't miss out on anything funds-wise, and now I have two pieces to turn in as well.

Tomorrow I'm going to my mother's. We're going back to the outlet stores to buy unattractive but comfortable underwear. I find that, the more time I spend with my mother, the more we move towards a mutual forty-three-year-old-ness. Partially this is because our hairstylist has decided to streamline his thought processes by styling us identically, of course. Heather and I never had that problem with Jenny, but our hair was different enough that it may just have been structurally impossible.

First, an update on yesterday's post. As it turns out, I misunderstood Robbie yesterday morning when he was explaining the situation to me, and the guy we yelled at was actually the tenant next door, whom I'd just never met. He was moving out, and he had to turn his key in to me, which he chose to do via envelope. He clearly fears my wrath now, which puts him, I must say, in a fairly small group of not especially good company.

In other apartment-managing news, I got a phone call today from the landlady, wife of the landlord. She had told me last week that she and the landlord, despite being married, never managed to communicate any important landlording information to each other, which I think is true because she was calling with a problem that the landlord and I had solved last week. So that was a little disorienting to work out, and plus I answered the phone expecting it to be my mom, so I was feeling discombobulated and was overcompensating by laughing much too enthusiastically at everything the landlady said. At one point I gave a particularly vigorous head laugh that I thought sounded stupid as soon as it was out of my mouth, and the landlady said, very sternly, in a tone reserved for speaking to potential drunks or idiots, "Jessica! Are you all right?" So I figured I'd really blown it and she thought I was snockered at two in the afternoon, and so I quickly said that I was fine, perfectly fine. It turns out she was speaking to her four-year-old daughter, also named Jessica, who had just fallen down or something. We both felt a little silly after that, I think.

Then tonight Robbie and I went out to buy new wheels for his rollerblades in Monroeville, and I'm going to be perfectly honest here--Monroeville is kind of a pit. Well, it's not awful, but it's very, very, very average, and somehow that's worse than, say, Aliquippa, which is at least interesting. Objectively, I suppose where I grew up, in the northern suburbs, is also very, very. very average, but, I mean, I grew up there, so that pushes it back into the "awful" category. Anyhow, we got the wheels, and then we went to JoAnn Fabrics, where I lucked out and got the bored teenage fabric cutter. The girl next to me had my nightmare experience--her cutter was a middle-aged woman who lectured her for five minutes on why what she was planning to do with her hem would never work. I told Robbie that, much the same way as I would be the one to ask for help if our car broke down, I may ask him to go to the cutting table for me from now on. Sure, I'm against perpetuating stereotypes, but the thing is, we're both completely incompetent, so why not profit from other people's low expectations for our gender, and save each other the shame?

Well, we have our parking space now, and I'd had a weekend of unparalleled joy, until this morning when Robbie was rushing to meet my high school friend's boyfriend for a golf game and we were parked in. It was sort of bizarre, actually--the car belonged to the friend of someone in the next house over, but said friend wasn't actually at her apartment and had to be telephoned to come move the car. By this point we were both pretty angry--I'd come out of the house to offer Robbie moral support--and when the guy showed up we both shouted at him for a while, which was sort of nice as a project for us.

But it got me thinking, I don't think I yell the way other people do. I only yell at people when I'm absolutely, 100%, undeniably, legally certain that I'm in the right, and after careful observation of other people, I think most of them yell experimentally some of the time, to see if they can negotiate a better position that way, and that would never occur to me. I mean, I argue often enough, but I don't get worked up and yell. This seems like a laudable personality trait, but on the other hand, when I do yell, I feel justified enough that it's very hard to get me to stop. I think a more evenly balanced person would engage in weaselly yelling, but also stop yelling eventually and go out with the yellee for a beer or something.

In other, less shrieky news, last night I figured out, all on my own, how to change my computer's noise from the regular beep to Ivan from "Coupling" saying "Massive." If nothing else, my "Coupling" obsession is leading to greater computer literacy. It's all about wanting to learn.