May I be excused?

It's 4 p.m. and, no, you can't have a cookie. Or ice cream. Or potato chips.

Why not?

Mom and Grandma both say "because you'll spoil your dinner."

It's a truth that's been passed down through the generations since the invention of between-meal snacks. Eating before dinner makes you un-hungry for dinner and then you get in trouble and end up having to sit at the table through The Cosby Show because you're still trying to clean your plate.

It's interesting to pause and note that between-meal snacks were a factor in instigating the French Revolution. The aristocrats spent a lot of their free time (and all they had was time) bragging to the hungry masses about their fresh croissants and assorted pastries. The rest is history.

Anyway, it was bound to happen that some ambitious and shady American doctor would eventually put a name, label and price on the dinner-spoiling industry. As seen on TV, that doctor's creation is the Full Bar.

Advertised as being "inspired by weight loss surgery principles," Full Bar is supposedly a natural way to help you lose weight by making you eating less. Brilliantly, the product's Web site notes that "when you feel full, you eat less." So, if you fill up part of your stomach before mealtime, your stomach will fill with less food at mealtime.

If I was at all a responsible kind of person, I would have put that whole paragraph in quotes, except for the sarcastic bits, but I'm simply laughing too much to bother.

A minuscule amount of research as uncovered three facts about Full Bar:

1. It's made of natural ingredients, which include puffed wheat cereal and sugar.
2. Full Bar contains no nutritional value, appetite suppressants or fat burners.
3. 24 Full Bars will cost you $50. Plus shipping.

It seems that we've had this whole "weight loss" phenomenon all wrong! It's not about how much you eat, or even what you eat. It's not about ingredients or will power or calories or carbs or sugar or vitamins or exercise. Turns out, it's all about timing your eating properly. Would you believe that if you eat one of these expensive non-nutritional snacks 30 minutes before you eat dinner, you won't be as hungry for dinner?

Of course you believe it! You were raised to believe it.

Mom, Grandma and the French have been right all along. They should get some royalties out of this.

So, I take it back ... Have a cookie. Have some ice cream. Have a Full Bar. Knock yourself out, and watch the pounds melt away.

Hello Again

Until the advent of Facebook, I always assumed that once a friendship died there was no going back. At least not until the next reunion. Even with Facebook connections, I still carry that belief. What is "friendship," really?

I don't know ... Whatever ... Anyway ...

This weekend I swallowed my pride and took the initiative to rekindle the long dormant embers of a friendship that has been cold for too long. And as luck would have it, the library system welcomed me back with open arms, provided I show proof of residence.

After a mere 30 minutes of taking in that book-y smell and perusing the shelves and shelves of available fiction, I proudly exited the library with my head held high, two books nestled in my arm and a brand new library card attached to my key chain. What'll they think of next?

Apparently pride is quickly regurgitated.

Why did I take this long overdue step? It's essentially because I'm a gigantic nerd (not that only nerds own library cards, and not that there's anything wrong with being a nerd) and I spent several hours one night last week researching and compiling a spring/summer reading list for myself.

For some reason, I've been missing that piece of paper we used get at the end of the school year that had very intelligent-sounding literary suggestions. And then there were the various syllabi that literature majors are handed from term to term with even more intelligent-sounding explorations. And then there's my obsession with lists and words. And, as Debi can attest, lists of words.

So, now I have a list and a goal and a resource and all is right with the world.

Interested in comparing your nerdiness to mine? Here ya go:

• The Things They Carried (O'Brien)
• A Lesson Before Dying (Gaines)
• Robinson Crusoe (Defoe)
• Finding Freedom: Writings from Death Row (J. Masters)
• The Diary of Sam Pepys (Pepys)
• Wide Sargasso Sea (Rhys)
• The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby (Dickens)
• Love in the Time of Cholera (Garcia-Marquez)
• One Hundred Years of Solitude (Garcia Marquez)
• Einstein's Dreams (Lightman)
• Winnie the Pooh (Milne)
• A Short History of Nearly Everything (Bryson)
• The Gone-away World (Harkaway)
• Narrow Dog to Indian River (Darlington)
• A Far Cry from Kensington (Spark)
• The Four Corners of the Sky (Malone)
• The School of Essential Ingredients (Bauermeister)
• Dune (Herbert)
• The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet (Larsen)
• The Servants' Quarters (Freed)
• Road Dogs (Leonard)
• Woodsburner (Pipkin, Talese)
• A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (Eggers)
• Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers (Roach)
• Pirate Latitudes (Crichton)
• The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)

I wrote a haiku about retainers.

Resigned to my fate,
I haven't gagged much today.
Ask me tomorrow.

Part of the Routine

Sitting at my desk, I lean back to admire the smooth, even curve of my bite in my peanut butter sandwich when Eric walks by on his way to the printer. He points to the yogurt container in my lunch bag and says, "Do you ever wonder why people lick the lids of those things?"

Actually, no, I've never wondered that before. But it's on my mind now.

I suppose it's one of those automatic things that you do without thinking about it because you've always done it without thinking about it. Like closing your eyes when you sneeze, burying your face in fresh-from-the-dryer laundry, watching a scary movie when you get to Aaron's house, or tripping the weird kid in the hallway on the class trip to the water fountain.

I learned a lot about repeatable patterns and routines in school. And not just high school - it goes all the way back to elementary school. That's where we had the communal coat closets and everyone put their coats and boots and backpacks in the same place day after day after day. It's also where we automatically lined up in alphabetical order to go anywhere and everywhere. I always stood behind Michelle Walter and next to John Walker.

We visited the library on Wednesdays, the gym on Tuesdays, and on Fridays we pushed our desks to the sides of the classroom so the other homerooms could come into Miss Lasher's room with their carpet remnants for movies and film strips. On Mondays we went to art and sat in our assigned seats that were ever-so-helpfully numbered, and that left Thursdays for music class where we learned to sing the names of the states in alphabetical order. I wonder if anyone under the age of 30 knows what a film strip is.

At the sounding of the mid-day lunch command, we marched like little soldiers in our orderly lines to the cafeteria. Kids who brought their lunches carried the bright plastic boxes at their sides with one finger on the unreliable plastic latch that caused copious amounts of embarrassment when it would open without warning and spill one poor kid's lunch all over the floor because he didn't have it properly secured. Let that be a lesson.

Line by line, we filed into the cafeteria. With the freedom to sit by our friends, we always sat in the same places next to our friends. Me on the end, Val to my left, Mandy in front of me, Debi next to Mandy. No boys allowed.

Sometimes my dad would bring enormous chocolate chip cookies home from work and mom would cram one into my lunchbox. She'd have to break off a little bit of it to fit it all in, and on those days we all got really excited about dessert. Face it, we were always excited about dessert. And we still are. Sometimes there were Twinkies, other times Little Debbie snack cakes. One universal favorite was pudding. Chocolate Jell-O pudding was a heavenly treat. Not wanting to waste even the smallest taste, we'd break into those cups and immediately lick the lid clean.

Hmmmmm.

Did the dryer just go off?

Believe in Miracles

Yesterday, after the professional Russian hockey players beat the professional Czech hockey players (and before the professional U.S. hockey players beat the professional Canadian hockey players), NBC aired a terrific segment about the 1980 U.S. amateur hockey team that, against all odds, defeated the unbeatable Russian national team and went on to win the gold medal. It was such a moving moment in sports history that I wish I'd been old enough to have any level of understanding, reasoning or memory. Alas, I was probably napping when it happened, but I did eventually see Miracle.

Seeing the nation rally behind a team of virtually unknown but amazingly talented athletes led me to the conclusion that by continuing to allow professional athletes to compete in the Olympic games, we are ensuring that there will never again be any Miracle on Ice moments. And aren't those moments that the Olympics should be about?

The Olympic games should be a chance for the little guys to show off the athleticism and skill that they practice tirelessly day-in and day-out. Those athletes shouldn't be relegated to sitting at home eating pizza and wishing for their chance. The Olympic Games are their stage. What message are we sending when we tell our up-and-coming athletes to ride the pine while we send in the professionals to take care of business and appease the greedy political machines.

A fan of professional sports (the NBA excluded), I understand the ferocity of the American competitive spirit. I love sports and wouldn't trade our freedom of professional sporting for anything, but would it be unimaginably painful to gate check our egos and put the popularity contest on hold for a couple of weeks every few years to give anonymous talent its chance to shine?

Selecting the best of our professional athletes to make up the "national teams" does nothing to ignite the national spirit that is the basis of the Games. It doesn't demonstrate our unity through diversity nor does it showcase our faith in the future of this country. All it does is prove that we're good at keeping statistics, that we can create a roster of professional athletes who have the best ones, and that we're too arrogant, lazy, disinterested, [insert your own adjective here] to look any further. We are missing the forest.

Have you ever attended a high school basketball game? College hockey? Heck, intramural volleyball? You'd be hard pressed to find more heart in someone who earns millions of dollars a year for lacing up his shoes and waving to the crowd than in a teenager who's standing at the plate hearing his hometown cheering in the stands.

Call me crazy, but when it comes to the team I want to see representing my country and me in a world-wide competition, I want to see real people who are like me (but without all of the insecurity and ADD and with more dedication). I don't want to see paid celebrities that I can see every night on ESPN or Dancing with the Stars. I'm talking the Jerry Rice's and Emmitt Smith's here, not the Shawn Johnson's and Apolo Ohno's, whose Olympian status was the reason they were on the show.

I may be on my own, but I would much rather watch a team with a heart full of pride and promise lose than a humdrum "team that can't lose" take the gold Olympiad after Olympiad after Olympiad. That sounds dull and opposite to the Olympic Creed:

"The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win but to take part, just as the most important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle. The essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well."

If not during the Olympics, when will the passionately hopeful have their moment?

In the meantime: Go USA!

You know what? While I'm at it: Go Moldova!

The River City: Summarized

Richmond’s origins stretch back to 1609 when English settlers from Jamestown decided to get outta dodge. In 1780, the capital of the Commonwealth of Virginia was moved from Williamsburg to Richmond, and it remains the capital to this day. Often referred to as The River City, Richmond is built on the shores of the James River, which is the 12th largest river in the U.S. that is in a single state.

In 1781, Benedict Arnold commanded that the Richmond be burned to the ground but by 1782, Richmond had risen from the ashes and has managed to thrive without a repeat of that disaster, thanks to the James and Richmond’s Department of Fire and Emergency Services.

Located in the center of the state, Richmond has, depending on traffic, relatively easy access to Virginia Beach, Washington, DC and whatever is located on the North Carolina border. Rightly considered to be a southern state, Virginia is still far enough north to offer both the pleasantries and the un-pleasantries of all four seasons. Summers, however, are hotter and often reach into the 90s while winters are mild wherein ice is prevalent and snow is rare—unless it’s 2010 and I feel like I’m living in Erie again. My snow brush is thrilled, though, as it’s usually stuck in the closet year after year. Richmond also sees the occasional hurricane.

This is a city rank with history. In 1775, in support of the American Revolution, Patrick Henry delivered his famous “Give Me Liberty or … Death” speech in the city’s St. John’s Church. As fate would have it, Henry saw both of his demands met as Americans defeated the British and became independent in 1783, and then in 1799 he died of stomach cancer. Forty years later, the Medical College of Virginia (MCV) was founded.

MCV is now the medical campus of Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU), which is located downtown and joins Virginia Union University and The University of Richmond as the city’s biggest schools where thousands of students study each year. Some study to be doctors, some study to be lawyers, teachers or writers. Still others go on to attain degrees in travel and tourism, which makes it fortunate that Richmond has so much to offer in the lines of tourism. From the Edgar Allan Poe Museum to the Holywood Cemetery, Landmark Theatre and the Fan District, there’s something for tourists of all interests. Dining, nightlife and culture are abundant in Richmond as long as you don’t go too far east.

When the Civil War broke out in 1861, Richmond was elected the Capital of the Confederacy. In 1907, Monument Avenue, a popular west to far-enough-east thoroughfare, was designed to honor local Confederate heroes including J.E.B Stuart, Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson and Jefferson Davis. (Of these, Stonewall Jackson was the only one who didn’t survive the War.) Years later and amidst heated controversy, a statue of tennis great Arthur Ashe was commissioned and seemingly put an end to the commissioning of Monument Avenue statues.

Speaking of sports heroes, Richmond features no professional sporting teams. However, amateurs are welcome. The Richmond Renegades hockey team no longer exists, and there was an indoor football team here for a while, but they didn’t last long. Baseball is the local pastime of choice and the city recently lost our beloved Richmond Braves. They are being replaced this spring by the Richmond Flying Squirrels – a name that will inevitably inspire incapacitating fear in their opponents. Richmond International Raceway is a popular destination at least twice a year when NASCAR comes to town. Indy Racing also draws a smaller crowd, but either way traffic on race day is always impossible.

To get here, book your flight to RIC or make your way east to Washington, DC and head due south on Interstate 95. Don’t take the first I-295 exit because it bypasses the city and you’ll end up in Charlottesville, and it’ll take you at least an hour to get back. Lesson learned.

Bring your family, dress in layers and enjoy all that Richmond has to offer!

Ain't that a hole in the boat

So. Life, right?

Oof.

Yesterday I remembered that I used to keep a fairly regular blog.

Last night I reread most of its nonsense and was impressed to find that I still understand most of the inside jokes.

This morning I decided that I needed a new writing project.

This afternoon I received a notebook in the mail from my cousin Maggie. As part of her school project, I'm to fill a couple of pages with info about the city and state in which I live.

Tonight I will write the best essay about Richmond, Virginia that the world has ever seen.

Tomorrow-ish you will agree with me.

The day after that I'll send the notebook to one of you so you can play, too. Aaron.

Ha!

Does anyone know anyone who lives in Tennessee?

Not Very Nice

This morning I was getting coffee ... Ok, I wasn't getting coffee. I was getting hot chocolate. I don't drink coffee, but "getting coffee" sounds more grown-up than "getting hot chocolate." It's the same with ordering white wine instead of white zinfandel or saying "I like watching Grey's Anatomy" instead of "I like watching Wipe Out."

I don't like watching Grey's Anatomy.

As I walked back to my unassigned and awkwardly tiny desk that faces a not very cheery but still brightly colored red wall, the middle elevator opened and I found myself looking away quickly to avoid being spotted giggling at the people who disembarked.

There were two of them. Both men and both with the same kind of body type - the kind that suggests they were athletes in their misspent youth. They were also wearing very similar clothing. Black windbreakers and black pants.

The one on the left had his backpack slung over his right shoulder, while the one on the right had his backpack slung over his left shoulder. They were engrosed in an animated conversation, as if they were on the verge of discovering the next big thing in financial services, nodding their heads in unison and finishing each other's sentences.

You may think I found the scene funny because of how mirrored they were ... But you're wrong.

Turns out, the gentleman on the right was at least two heads taller than the one on the left. At least. One was looking almost straight down while the other - stay with me - was facing almost straight up.

Maybe I thought I was seeing someone in a funhouse.

Or maybe at that precise moment the universe was revealing to me that it knew I didn't in fact have any coffee in my cup.

A Lesson in Following Through

It’s not funny to have the box for a Mr. T Chia Pet at your desk.

It is funny to have a living and growing Mr. T Chia Pet at your desk.

The guy over there needs to read this post.

Wrong

I think the car commercial has confused "need" and "want" in their latest piece:

"You need a new car, but you want to know if you can afford it."

Isn't that the kind of thinking that got us into this mess in the first place?

I've been holding this back for too long

After President-elect Obama gave his speech on election night, and as he was hugging his family and Joe Biden's family and waving to all of the screaming and crying people (and Oprah), you may or may not have noticed the leaderly background music that was playing.

Well! That music was composed by John Williams as the soundtrack for the movie "The Patriot," which stars Mel Gibson, Heath Ledger, and Jason Isaacs.

Whew! I can breathe again.

In Case of Emergency

Now that I'm thinking about it ... You might want to print this out and hang it on the fridge. As I have.

You're welcome!

Tick Tock

For 13 months I've been journaling my dreams. Many times, the images are very telling of a current life situation. Other times, the dreams are a raw glimpse into my psyche, a look at what makes me tick.

The latter are the portions that I've recently enjoyed sharing with Aaron, and now I'd like to share a short one with you (some go on for pages and pages and pages ... I'll spare you).

Enjoy!


Dinosaurs are attacking my office building. T-Rex teeth keep dropping through the ceiling. My job is to baby-sit the cats, and it's difficult to keep them still. A man who identifies himself as "a senior executive" shows up among the destruction and asks me if our printer works. I tell him that I don't know, but he's welcome to check it out on his own. He walks away and seems pleased, so I assume that, yes, the printer is still online. When it seems like the danger has passed, I pack up the cats and get into the trunk of a car.



That was great fun! If you're lucky I'll share a zombie one next time!

I wrote a Haiku about the weather.

It's cold enough to
Snow. But it won't. What a gyp.
Meteor shower!

I didn't want you to forget how cute Zoey is.

And Another Thing

Part One
Last week, I was driving home from work and discovered that a relatively substantial spider was living in my car. As the sun set and I tried to focus on the road in front of me rather than the arachnid, I saw him wander back and forth and back and forth across my windshield for the full 40-minute commute.

When I first spotted him, my first reaction wasn't panic ... Nor was it elation at the fact that I was suddenly at the mercy of an eight-legged critter that could very well be deadly. I had one simple and immediate thought:

"Denise would totally freak out at this."

And it made me laugh. Denise would totally freak out. She would scream and drop her phone ... And probably her nail polish and eyelash curler. She would bat wildly and without abandon at the poor thing, and if she didn't crush it with a rogue flip flop she'd managed to find in the car, she would spring from the vehicle the moment she got home and order Jim, Chris, Cody or any available human in the general vicinity to kill it instantly.

She would! And she'll admit it! Ask her ...

Anyway, I decided not to bat wildly at anything. I made sure I was aware of the spider's location at all times, and when it approached the lower left side of the window, I blasted the fan; Thereby rerouting him rather quickly. I don't know what I would have done had he decided to crawl onto the visor. I knew that was a possibility, but I had no plan. I probably would have called Denise to scream.

Part Two
As it happens, today was pretty cold. When I left the house for the one and only time I decided to wear a pair of boots that have been in the coat closet for quite some time.

Before putting them on, I turned them upside down and shook them ... I even beat them on the porch railing a bit to dislodge any potential residents. Confident that I was in the clear, I put them on and discovered no trouble whatsoever.

About 15 minutes later, as I was in the car and exiting 295, I felt what I thought was a tiny bit of crawling under my right toe. And what did I do? I thought of Denise and I laughed ... A bit ... It was conclusively not the same kind of laugh I uttered on the day of the spider. It was unsure.

My eyes widened, as the crawling made it's way down my foot.

"Oh my God!" I squealed as I approached the first light ... Which was green. By the second green light I really was laughing (and still squealing), and whatever was in my shoe had migrated to the arch of my foot. Thankfully, the third light was red.

In a rush, I stopped the car, put it in park, hit the button to make my window go down, and wrenched off my shoe. I batted at my foot and shook the boot out the window.

Honestly, I have no idea what the intruder was. I like to think it was some kind of ancient dust ball or a tiny, dead, formerly-crawly thing, but I'll never know for sure.

The light changed, and I made the turn into my destination. In the parking lot, I put my shoe back on and spent a moment laughing at myself ... In a totally freaked out kind of way.

Glad You're Not Me

I was in the orthodontist's waiting room, sitting just opposite two kids whose combined age probably equalled mine ... At the least, their total came very close.

They were clearly a couple, whispering plans for the afternoon and schedules for semester finals. Meanwhile, I was chatting very loudly with the office staff about the weather and the economy. When they glanced at me, I could totally read "Can you imagine being that old and having braces?" And I was fine with it. I get that look all the time.

After a moment or two of silent contemplation on both sides of the room, the doctor came in and said, "Miranda and Jody, you can come on back." And the boy's face went completely white with surprise ... Until he saw me stand up.

"Oh, man," he said to me, suddenly looking more comfortable in his chair. "My name is Joe! i didn't want to go back there!"

I said that I didn't blame him, and we all had a nice little laugh that bridged the generations.

automatic renewal

"Please wait while Norton fixes your problems."

i wish i'd known about this years ago.

i'm feeling better already.

running riot

in shriek of the mutilated, a guy in a yeti costume and a cannibal indian kill their prey by scaring them to death. the innocent girl gets tied to a tree and then the yeti jumps out occasionally ... rar! ... she screams, flips out, and dies.

jaws goes after the kill in a much more direct way: the innocent girl paddles around in the surf and all of a sudden ... gulp! ... gone. and no one has to break out the electric knife.

today i read an article about an "experienced sailor" who was knocked off his boat in lake erie and swam for 13 hours to get to shore. (i won't even get into the reason behind life jackets.) the way i see it, this is like open water without as much desperation, so it may not make it to the big screen.

however, the image of the guy stranded in that ugly brown water is stuck in my head and i keep thinking about how things would have turned out for me if i found myself in his situation. i've come up with two possible outcomes ...

scenario #1
upon regaining consciousness and realizing where i am and what i don't have, i totally panic and drown almost immediately.

scenario #2
upon regaining consciousness, etc., i panic for a moment but manage to calm myself down (whew!) and decide in which direction i'll swim. for the first couple hours i beat myself up psychologically about the whole life jacket thing and worry about having to tell people about the stupid thing i did.

in that time, i plan the lie that i'll tell when i reach the shore so that no one knows what actually happened. i run my lines a bunch of times and try them with improvisations to make sure my story is believable and repeatable, but not exactly the same every time.

with that straight, i sing american pie in my head a few times because it's the longest song i know. then i go thru a few wrest favorites and get thirsty, which is natural. it's a good thing lake erie is fresh water. it's not such a good thing that it's chock full of e coli.

bored with singing, i decide to run through the dialogue of the movies i have memorized. my brain thinks "we're gonna need a bigger boat" is funny and ironic, but it's actually the catalyst of my demise because now i only think about sharks and i wonder just how big walleye get. do they eat people?

now i'm freaked. all i want to do is get out of the water because i'm convinced something is circling beneath me. i can hear it ... it's one of the tremors monsters that's gone marine!

something brushes my leg. in reality, it's probably a boot or a mattress or some other kind of garbage, but i think it's a water-bound yeti.

finally, i succumb ... it's a shark. there's no possible way it's a shark, but there's no possible way it's not a shark. i brace myself for all of the biting and am so worked up about it that my body just can't take it and everything goes dark. my fear has killed me.

the conclusion
i might as well have been tied to a tree.

ugh.

so, congratulations guy who spent 13 hours swimming in the bacteria-infested waters of lake erie! i commend you and hope you don't have salmonella.

i clearly need a stronger grasp on reality.

totally wired

i woke up this morning tired of the same old thing - wanting to do something different, to make a change or two.

first, i didn't hit the snooze bar. even tho it's easy to snooze until 7.58 when working from home, i got out of bed at 6.45. i made a cup of tea and walked in the yard with zoey before turning on the news. *gasp! who am i?*

then, i took a shower and resisted the temptations to both get back into my PJs and let my hair dry on it's own. i even said yes to breakfast!

i worked without allowing the little things to stress me out - and there are a lot of little things, let me tell you.when i was asked difficult questions, i didn't pass them on to someone else or put off answering them.

i also watched dr. phil, a behavior of which i'm not proud, but it's not something in my normal routine. and "watched" is a strong word. "half-listened" is much more accurate and still a change. and when lewis came to mow the lawn i volunteered to run out to the ATM so he didn't have to come back tomorrow. but he said he'd take a check because he trusts me. what a wonderful vote of confidence!

oh! and amid all of those things, i got braces. so that makes things different.

it's funny. val and i spent a number of years laughing at lisping ... we placed food orders with lisps and even wrote an entire column completely in lisp (unbelievably, it was published unedited). now, actually having one instead of always having to pretend is awesome.