pioneer woman (fail)

5:00 pm - leave for Pioneer Woman's book signing

6:00 pm - circle completely full parking lot like vultures, curse openly at other drivers

6:15 pm - wait to get in line (they have a crazy 'color' ticket system going on)

6:45 - get in line

7:00 - listen to inane conversation of women behind us

7:30 - still in line, have moved ahead maybe 20 steps

7:45 - Ashley goes next door to buy flip flops

7:50 - Ree walks by on her way to a bathroom break; hope that seeing the long line will make her sign faster and not have conversations with every single person

8:00 - still in line, feeling weak from hunger, overhear someone saying the borders cafe is out of food

8:30 - still in line

9:20 - have moved up maybe three steps in the past 45 minutes - decide to bail

What this picture doesn't show is the line of about 150 people snaking through the bookshelves on the right.

9:30 - dinner at Chipotle; throw dagger eyes at smug people coming in with their books signed.

English Class

Dear Sapphire, author of Precious Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire,

Have you ever heard of a small thing called character development? I know it takes time, but it generally helps to build a stronger story. While watching the movie I wondered if Oprah could somehow be involved in making this 'book' into a film....oh yes, there's her name right in the credits. Did you learn nothing from Beloved?

Has anyone read Push? Is it any better than the movie? Weak screenplay aside, I must say that Monique's performance was fantastic.

babies! inspired by - babies!

Which baby is cuter? Impossible to say! Both babies have songs of adoration sung to them by their aunts. Gracie's song variations are more complex because we've had two years to work on them:

"She's a princess puppy pal girl friend, Gracie is my puppy pal, cutest puppy friend in the world, yes, she's a princess puppy pal, I love her, she is my friend, princesspuppypal, princesspuppy paaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaal" etc.

Aunt Lori put an interesting spin on Lucy's song of adoration (she can correct me if I missed anything):

"Lucy is the cutest girl, baby princess, rainbows, sunshine, UNICORN!"

sweetbread - not exactly bread

Lori took me to dinner at Restaurant Eve in Old Town Alexandria this weekend. It was so delicious and wonderful because I was able to eat meat in good conscience. (I haven't eaten meat since September - aside from one enjoyable incident involving Eggs Benedict). It's not meat-eating in itself I have a problem with, but factory farms, which supply over 90% of the meat found in groceries and restaurants. A system created and driven by consumer demand for cheap meat). Restaurant Eve gets all of its meat from Polyface Farm, a local meat supplier that humanely raises and slaughters its animals.

I had a steak and it was dang good. Lori had the veal sweetbreads which I tried, and they were dang good as well. I almost wished I had ordered them instead. It was not until later that she investigated sweetbreads and discovered what they are. What's surprising is that even knowing this, I would eat them again. I think if you're going to kill something you should not be averse to using all of its parts. And they really were delicious.

nonexistant speed

Someone left behind a watch/stopwatch after a recent wedding and never claimed it so I took it to time my runs. I used it once and will never use it again because dear god I knew I was slow but crap! It was very discouraging. I tell myself as long as I cover the distance the time doesn't matter to me. But it does. So I'm not allowed to use the stopwatch anymore.

Today while running I saw a man peeing on the golf course. Right next to the main road. On the edge of someone's back yard. At least make an attempt to go a little ways into the woods, come on. **I should add that this peeing man was part of a golfing foursome, not just some random weirdo, which I would not have thought twice about. Money obviously can't buy class**

Here's a completely unrelated story. I recently bought some shoes at Target and the cashier said, "oh yeah, I gotta get me some comfortable shoes because I'm on my feet all day, maybe I'll get some crocs [I was NOT buying crocs!]. I also need to go get my feet done" (me: oh yeah, for summer) "Yeah, and my boyfriend's got a thing for feet, they can't be all crusty, you know what I mean?" TMI Target lady, T.M.I.

Remedy for Aging

Kindle is mine! Mwahaha!

Aging

Last year I was informed that I had reached the age at which brain cells begin dying. This year I have taken to wearing a pedometer and practicing rejuvenating yoga for my crunchy back (in addition to lying on tennis balls to get the knots out).

But on the bright side, I do not have ovarian cancer, as I originally suspected after googling my symptoms earlier this year.