Tuesday, February 27, 2007

The Times They Are A-Changin'

Sing it Bob, sing it.

H got into BYU. My brother F is now 16 years old. A had a baby. H2 will be in High School next year. M-Lite is a BYU student now. F2 is almost engaged. Boney M is across the country in South Carolina. I'm dating someone. I think I just saw the devil ice skating to work.

I guess I'm just always surprised at how time passes and why and I wonder where my youth went when I wasn't watching. I've almost cemented my plans for this Summer. Spring I'm staying here and working. Summer I'm going home to Portland. Fall I'm deferring but coming back to Provo to work before going back to school in the Winter. There you have it - the next year of my life all laid out. Only I hate making decisions - especially ones I feel are irresponsible. I'm going home for only a month or two, which means I can't possibly get a job there. I've had a job since I was 14. I don't know what I'm going to do with myself when I go home if I'm not going to be working. A huge part of my identity is what my job is. Crap. I'll think of something.

Sunday, February 25, 2007

T with Mussolini

My old roommate that I used to call H? Her name is now the Maoist. We see each other on Tuesdays to catch up and to watch our shows together. She asked me why I hated her when we lived together, and I told her that I hadn't hated her, but that it took me some time to get used to living with other people. Up until Thanksgiving of last year I was still kind of wary of my roommates. Anyway, I wanted to share a few short things from when we lived together.

(1) The watermelon. One night the Maoist and I were going to bed. We'd just gotten on our pajamas, brushed our teeth, turned off the light, crawled under the covers, the whole routine. Then,

me: the Maoist?
Maoist: Yeah?
me: I want watermelon.
Maoist: Hmmm. Okay.

And we got up and got dressed again and she drove us around town looking for watermelon, which wasn't quite in season yet, but it had been rumored that Albertson's had some. We went to three stores, and finally ended up at Ream's, where I bought a small melon and some Q-tips, and she bought some gummy bears and let me eat most of the green ones because they're her least favorite.

The thing was, I'd been thinking about watermelon for months, craving it every day, thinking about it all the time, like what happens when I get a song stuck in my head. I had yellow submarine stuck in my head for at least 8 months straight last year. I'd hum it without realizing it all of the time.

(2) The great otter pop eating contest of 2005. Somehow the Maoist and I got into an argument about who loved otter pops more. She said it was her, and I countered that an entire hemisphere of my brain was devoted to otter pops. We decided to have it out, and made plans for a contest. But how to go about it? We debated long and hard before we came up with a fitting procedure. We each bought a box of 100 otter pops, and whoever ate the most during a set period of time (one 45 minute episode of Gilmore Girls on DVD) would be the winner.

Some extreme tactics were adopted on my part, and included me drawing on the walls of her shower. I have these shower crayons I got for my birthday once, so I left her a little drawing - her stick figure frame with X's for eyes, lying in a pool of melted otter pops as my stick figure (holding an otter pop) stood triumphant and gloating over her, in her otter induced coma.

We sat in our living room for the whole affair, pausing at the start to switch some flavors with each other (I don't care much for grape or orange you see) and we sat and ate. Except that pretty soon we couldn't feel our fingers, and we were forced to eat them with our hands wrapped up in blankets. The Maoist quit after 11 otter pops, and I could have stopped there, but I was curious to see how many I could actually endure eating in 45 minutes. I'd been averaging a pop a minute in the beginning, but toward the end when the sugar started clouding my mind I slowed down a bit. In the end I ate 30. My tongue was brown from all the colors being mixed, and what's more, I couldn't feel the top of it properly for 2 or 3 days at least. What can I say - I'm a beast.

(3) The fort. I had a couple of sheets I'd gotten from somewhere so we built a fort in the living room once. And not your average couch cushion cave fort, but one of magnificent and grandiose proportions. It enveloped our sofas and reached all the way to the ceiling, serving to separate the T.V. viewing area from the rest of the living room. And it kept getting upgraded as the days went on. Sewing was involved, broom handles were used to ensure structural stability, and a great amount of push pins were secured for the whole process. It was amazing. I think it must have stayed up for a couple of weeks.

At one point the landlady came over because she wanted to show the apartment to some potential renter, but upon seeing the fort thought better of it. I'm pretty sure I know why - it's because our fort was so incredible that she didn't want the potential renter to think all the apartments were as great as ours. Surely they'd be upset upon discovering that their own apartment did not come equipped with a fort. There would be a major upheaval if she let people know what they were missing out on. That's the only explanation.

(4) I have a small blue book, called Symptoms and Illnesses that I used to read before going to bed. It amuses me still. Anyway, we used to play a game where one of us would flip through the pages until the other said stop, and you got whatever disease they landed on. That was fun. I've recently taken to carrying it in my purse and pulling it out to give people diseases. I myself had lip cancer recently.

(5) So we had some good times, even if it took me awhile to adjust. However, I'm sure she disliked me too at the start. Just looking at our room you could see the discord there - her side was organized and clean and tidy and everything good, whereas my side was very messy, with stuff covering every inch of my walls, and all sorts of crap flowing off the surface of my desk and onto the floor. And I never did my dishes, which served to annoy everyone, not just the Maoist.

Also, I was rarely home, preferring to hang out in 15 where M-Lite lived. Being away from home I just wanted to be around people I knew well. I've quite obviously known M-Lite for my whole life, and I grew up with Sliquify and MJiggle who also lived in 15. I really did consider that apartment to be my home for a time- they called me the 7th roommate. Krebscout refers to me sometimes as her almost roommate, and I in turn always forget that we haven't ever roomed together, so in my stories I always forget and call her my roommate.

It's odd to think that I almost didn't live in the old ward, as most everyone I'm friends with now I met there. I had been planning on living in the dorms, but I'm glad now that I didn't. It was a fun year in the old ward, and I'm kind of interested to see how things will turn out in the Fall as Uffish, krebscout and I move back. It won't be the same - probably not even close, but I still hope it will be incredible. We'll see.

Wednesday, February 21, 2007

I think your cat is fat

It is quite possible that today has been one of the best days ever. I went to my classes and then wasn't really looking forward to going to work at all, but today surprised me. My coworker C and I did trash and talked about Marxism, capitalism, phonetics, the importance of intonation in different languages, asking rhetorical questions in sign language, and everything else imaginable.

So, we were talking about tone and speaking in Chinese, and joking about how if you get the tone wrong when you mean to say "I think you're pretty" it could conceivably come out as being "I think your cat is fat" instead. A guy sitting on a bench near the trash can we were changing was listening and he told us how to say "I think your cat is fat" in Mandarin, which made my day. He also told us that he had overheard us earlier when we'd been doing trash on a different floor and were discussing W's and H's.

There were sets to do, things to clean, and jokes to be told. We wrote down a million quotes from everything that happened today. It was spring outside. I hummed a song I had stuck in my head. I awarded people points for various hilarious reasons. S played the piano while I joked with A. C received good news about her husband's pell grant. Today I was happy for people.

Mostly today was good because it felt like the Summer, and not just because of the weather. Today really took me back to how much fun last summer was, and reminded me that work could be fun again. When we were joking today I asked myself how was I going to leave these people in the Spring? I stay where I work for the people, which is how I got sucked into staying in Provo last Summer.

And today was amazingly fun, just like my job used to be. My shift ended with two incredible events occurring. First - one of my coworkers (a guy) put on some heels we found in the ballroom and danced the Cha Cha with another coworker. Hilarity and a lot of flash photography ensued. Second - I slapped a coworker in the face. As hard as I could. Some months ago S promised me I could slap him, or rather I told him that I would someday, and he agreed. Today I called in that promise and hit him as hard as I could. I think it's one of those things that if I went through life without having slapped someone I would have regretted it.

I'm severely overjoyed. The end

Saturday, February 17, 2007

Kalimazoo

My voice is back (kind of) and I'm in Rexburg for the weekend. I come back Monday. A few other updates - I bought something from Taco bell for the first time ever on Thursday. It was a soda, but I still think that's rather momentous. I tried to go to sleep early that night, because I had a test the next day, but people were still up and the light was still on, and then one of my roommates happened to own a bag of kazoos. We all got one. Mine's green, but I can't get a continuous hum into it. M-Lite took requests, and mine were "Lavender Blue" and "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy". Hearing them made me homesick. After the light was out and as I drifted off to sleep I could still hear my roommates and their kazoos, but I didn't really mind. It's not always that you get to experience such a thing.

I got to see my mom, because she came to Rexburg for a week, so our visits overlapped for about 18 hours. I got to hold my niece. She's tiny and looks just like her dad. I haven't held her much because I don't want to get her sick. You'll all be forced to see some pictures when I get back to Provo.

Yesterday my roommate came in with the mail and there was a letter for me from home. I opened it to find another sock. No fooling. It was from my sister H2 this time. A blue sock with polka dots, and with it a note that said "Have a Happy Valentines Day! (hope you get lots of sweets)" and inside the sock was a dollar bill. I had just regained my voice and the first thing I used it for was to laugh uproariously. This second piece of sock mail was postmarked exactly a month after the first, and I think that the one thing that could make me truly happy would be to receive a sock in the mail every month from now on. So, if any of you out there send me a sock postmarked on the 12th of March I will love you forever probably.

Also, I'm here in the library and what do I find sitting on the desk next to me? This book titled Street Gangs: Current Knowledge and Strategies. This makes me happy.

Wednesday, February 14, 2007

What's in the box?

The Valentine's Day boxes you made in elementary school. Do you remember them? As I've stated earlier, I can make anything out of cardboard. Evidence - the two hams, the log I made for this summer's production of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, and every school project I've ever made. I lived for Valentine's day. I was the kid who had the biggest, coolest, most ingenious box every year. No shoe boxes for me - I pulled out the big guns. Hot glue guns that is.

First grade: my box was shaped like a computer monitor. Second grade: a giant blue tennis shoe. With laces and those grommet holes that are in the sides of tennis shoes for no reason. Third grade: a giant clown head with a hat. This thing was almost taller than I was. You put the valentines in its mouth. Fourth grade: a yellow dinosaur, approximately 4 feet tall, with a tail and jagged white paper teeth. The cards went in the mouth and collected in the neck. Fifth grade: Heartbreak Hotel. A whole complex with little windows and a giant broken heart atop the building.

My mom usually had to drive me to school because these things were so big. Then I'd have to take my giant box home on the bus. There really was no need for them to be so huge - it's not like I got more valentines than anyone else, I just loved making things.

I didn't stop when my elementary school days were over - I made them for my younger siblings. H got a miniature piano one year. Brown with little painted keys. I even made some tiny sheet music for it. One I made for H2 was an outhouse. It had a moon shaped hole in the door and everything. And a little roof with purposefully uneven shingles and a ventilation thing. Fake slightly rusted hinges. You opened it up and dropped your valentine down the hole. There was even some toilet paper in there I think. I don't know what kind of message that sent, but it was fun to make. I actually reused that outhouse for a last minute tenth grade English class project - I managed to tie it in with Angela's Ashes. Man I'm awesome. And by awesome, I mean lazy.

I miss those days, when school meant getting to make things. I devoted an extraordinary amount of time to planning all of those boxes, and I wish more than anything I had pictures of all of them now. Believe me when I say they were incredible, and so was I.

Monday, February 12, 2007

180 or so

This is my third post for today - this is getting out of hand. I just had to say that I left the house for the first time in 42 hours to take my french test. I meant to study and take it earlier, but M-Lite and I got distracted making some valentines. I studied when I got there, in that room off to the side, and when I came out the line was out the door. I had to exit the building, join the end of the line and wait in the cold and cough. I didn't really mind -it was wonderful to breathe fresh air again. They ran out of Chem 106 tests and people were dispirited, so some girl pulled out her phone and started playing that oldie that goes sugar pie, honey bun, etc. That made me happy. I saw three people I knew in the line but wasn't able to talk to them. Oh well. I took my test. I don't think I failed it. I went to leave the testing center and as I opened the door I found two lines of people on either side of the walk, cheering and clapping and playing the guitar and offering me a cookie for a job well done. I have no idea who those people were, but I got a peanut butter cookie today. Life is good.

Fierce

There's a security guard at the library who looks ridiculously fierce. The first time I saw him he was glaring off into the distance, and I thought to myself that there was a good chance he could read minds and would know if I returned a book that was overdue. That is all.

Long, depressing, and not worth reading

Still home sick, and bored out of my mind. I still have to take my french test today, even though I can barely understand this chapter when I'm not feeling like death. Like I said, I lounged yesterday. I lolled also, but that's not important. I was bored. I watched Pollyanna. Please note for future reference, that watching a movie about a crippled girl does not actually lift your spirits. I managed to eat some applesauce while waiting to call home until after they would be out of church. H and I talked for over an hour, which made me feel better. We remembered a time we went to Enchanted Forest, this amusement park back home, and how we thought we were going to die on the log ride and promised each other all sorts of things in what we thought were our last moments together.

"If I die, you can have my cat sitting job."

I tried to go to bed at 8pm, but got up at various times after getting into bed. The first time was because somebody in the ward had a paper for me. The second time was around 11pm - I couldn't remember a date and needed to look it up on the computer. While I was up, a girl came over and she and my roommate began yelling. Squealing also occurred, and running around and slamming doors and screaming, all at a ridiculous volume. I walked past them to get to my room, and the girl asked what she could do for me. I responded rather coldly-

-You can stop screaming indoors. Good Night.

As I walked away I heard my roommate whisper "she's sick" as if this had something to do with me disapproving of their antics. The apartments where I live are loud all of the time. I have obnoxiously loud roommates, but even if they weren't home there would still be the people outside on the balconies making noise. Usually it's a combination of the two. I haven't finished my investigation yet, but I'm pretty sure the walls here are actually paper thin.

I told you I went to bed at 8pm. I did not fall asleep until sometime around 3am. I wanted to sleep and my brain wouldn't let me. I tried (unsuccessfully) to convince myself that I'd taken some NyQuil earlier. Surely thinking I'd taken some would induce a nice coma, but alas the placebo thing didn't work, probably because I knew I hadn't actually taken any. So my body was tired and my mind was running rampant, churning up all sorts of memories I'd forgotten, all while it rained outside my window.

I wanted more than anything to get up and go outside in the rain last night, but I stopped myself, and I don't know why. I told myself that it was because I was sick, but M-Lite pointed out that that has never stopped me before. She's absolutely right about that. I used to do all sorts of things in the rain. I even used to go out and jump on our trampoline during thunderstorms, or when it was hailing. One Sunday I rode my bike around the park by my house in the rain while wearing my church clothes. I also wore my old lady rain bonnet, which is a thing of beauty for those of you have yet to see it.

I thought about a million random things last night while I couldn't sleep. Most persistent was the thought that I wanted to go out on to the balcony and yell at my noisy neighbors, "FOR THE LOVE OF CRAP, SHUT UP AND GO TO SLEEP BEFORE I COME OVER THERE AND KICK YOU IN THE FACE!" As you can see, I'm not always as polite as I could be, but in my defense I did refrain from yelling this. I do say violent things like this all the time though. Anyway, some of the random things I thought about:

-How I picture doing math in my head, addition in particular.
-The health office at my middle school
-My memory. I wrote a whole post about this in my head last night, about how I can memorize all sorts of things very easily, like facts and numbers, but I forget things about myself a lot of the time.
-When I was bored yesterday and watching Pollyanna I got out my presidential place mat and memorized the presidents in order, just to see if I could. Last night I went through them more than a couple of times in order, then tried to cement their numbers in my mind by reciting them in columns, rather than in rows as they appear on my place mat. So- 1, 11, 21, 31, 41, 2, 12, 22, 32, 42, 3, like that. This didn't help me fall asleep. Curse you Warren G. Harding.
-I played What Are You Doing in my head. More W and N. I came up with Whaling Nintendos, and pictured someone yelling "White Wii!" as they fired an imaginary harpoon. Yeah, M-Lite didn't think it was funny either, so don't worry.
-My French test
-Friday the 13th
-How I picture the months of the year in my head as opposed to how everyone else I've talked to pictures them. Mine's vertical, whereas most people think horizontally and in a loop, and Boney M pictures the months as a backwards C if I'm not mistaken
-A million more things I can't remember now.

And here's the clincher - I cried. I never cry, and by never I mean very very rarely. It occurred to me that few people outside of my family have seen me cry, one of the two exceptions being a time I slipped in the bleachers at a high school football game and hit my shin really hard. Then I cried, and the people who knew me were probably disturbed, because they know that I do not cry. My sister's best friend saw me and went to find my sister.

A: Ummm. Genuine's crying.
H: What are you talking about?
A: I just saw her.
H: I don't know what you thought you saw, but it wasn't that.

It was because of my roommates and the fact that they were being loud when I wanted to sleep. I wanted to go out into the kitchen and tell them off, tell them how much I desperately wanted to sleep, and that I thought they were the loudest and most inconsiderate people I had ever met. But I knew that it wouldn't do any good, knew that it made no difference to them that I was upset, and I didn't want them to see me upset, so I did nothing - nothing but cry, and try to sleep in spite of my brain and wonder why I live the way I do, with strangers in a crappy apartment. I don't want to be in school right now, and I feel like I'm not allowed to quit. I just want to do what I want to do, which is:

-Sleep more
-Learn how to cook
-Make things, build things. Houses, forts, playgrounds, anything.
-Paint (fences, stage flats, etc.)
-Be in a play
-Repair vacuums
-Understand car engines
-Sew (drapes, costumes, the works!)
-Garden
-Teach children
-Read good books again
-Work in a library
-Ride my bicycle at the park
-Play softball
-Eat watermelon and corn on the cob
-Play croquet
-Learn how to play the clarinet properly
-Make a giant collage out of postage stamps
-Do anything that requires using a hot glue gun
-Make a movie
-Write children's books

I want to be doing all of these things rather than be in school right now. I want a bit of unstructured folly - I want life skills, things that I won't be graded on, things that are worth knowing. I want to be excited about something again.

Okay, I'm done now. Just know that all this is coming from the mind of someone who's housebound, getting over a fever, and who has eaten mostly carrot shavings and Advil today - I'm not normally this insane. Topics of upcoming posts should include reminiscences of living with the Maoist my freshman year, my scars, memory and the long word I can spell forward and backward in a short amount of time, the correlation between the office supplies you own and how much of an adult you are, and my Easter/laundry basket.

Sunday, February 11, 2007

Craptastic

It's raining again, and I'm glad. It makes the air taste better. In other news, I'm sick today. Sore throat, lightheadedness, cough, the works. Every time I inhale and exhale it feels like I'm breathing fire. I just realized that I should get out my Symptoms and Illnesses guide I love so much. Anyway, my jaw has been stiff for the last week or so on account of the fact that I have a wisdom tooth coming in. Then yesterday all my other teeth felt sore, and I got a small sore throat. This story ends with that small sore throat growing up into a much larger sore throat- I think it becomes a successful businessman and father of three, because that's how most of those stories usually end. So I'm lounging now, watching my favorite Disney movie, The Rescuers. My voice is also remarkably similar to how I sound when I do my Roman Holiday bit and say in a low throaty whisper "Gregory, you're the only man for me."

Thursday, February 08, 2007

Garbo

I'm an aunt. As of yesterday. My sister A had her baby - to be named Greta Mae. I'm planning on calling her Garbo, for obvious reasons. I'm an aunt. Hooray! I'm sad I don't have any pictures of her to put up here, but that's probably for the best, since newborns usually look a little squashed and overly pink.

When we first found out A was preganant M-Lite and I got all excited.

M-Lite: We're going to be aunts!
me: Yeah, we'll be able to lift ten times our own body weight.
M-Lite:Aunts, not ants, you fool.
me:Oh, right.

This is the first niece - my parents are now grandparents, which is really weird to me. It's probably not so weird to them though. My mom has been buying toys the last few years. A train set, a little red rocking chair, etc. One day a small kitchen play set appeared in our front entryway.

Dad: What is this doing here?
Mom: Oh, I found that at Goodwill.
Dad: Well, why isn't it still there - what are we doing with it?
Mom: It's for the grandkids.
Dad: We don't have any grandkids.
Mom: But we will.

Or at least that's how I tell it as happening. Anyway, my mom is flying to Idaho on Saturday to see A and the baby and help out for a few days. M-Lite and I will probably go sometime in March to visit, seeing as how we only live a few hours away. However, in April or May, A, B, and baby Garbo are moving to Pennsylvania, which means that I probably won't be seeing this kid for a long while. This is a shame really, because I will be an excellent aunt.

I told my coworkers that I was an aunt now, and they said something about me being able to spoil my niece. I cried out in horror, saying that nothing could be farther from the truth. Let me speak plainly - I do not believe in coddling children - working at a preschool for almost 4 years has taught me that. Should children be looked after? Fed and diapered? By all means yes. However, it is wrong when people go to the extremes trying to make their children happy. A pony? Trips to the Bahamas? Personalized baby stationary? Trombone lessons? A Power Wheels convertible? This is madness I say! Give them some masking tape to play with. Better yet, some blocks - you can make anything you want out of blocks. What ever happened to playing peek-a-boo or having a pet rock? My children are getting nothing but rocks to play with - rocks and whatever else they can find in the backyard.

Okay. I'm done ranting about parents who want the best for their children, because I didn't mean to get off on this tangent.

In other news, there's a Happy Pirates show tonight. Hooray for pillaging. Shows always make me nervous, but I do better at shows than in practice, which is a good thing, to say the least. If these people weren't getting in free I'd be tempted to give them a refund. Also, I became a pirate last January, so it's been over a year now since I signed my soul away. I'm glad. Krebscout and I joined at the same time, and I wasn't sure at first whether I wanted to join or not. I was scared then. I'm still scared now. I guess that's half the fun.

Baconflagration




We burned the ham, and it was glorious. I've been holding back this post until I could get the pictures on here. Also, I have to give Krebscout some mad props for the delicious pun that is the title of this post.

Yellow was kind enough to drive Krebscout, Ahem, Hamburglar, and myself over to an undisclosed location (which I shall refrain from naming lest “the bacon” should catch wind of what we did) and we started it on fire. This is Ahem getting ready to light it.


It didn’t catch at first, but then smoke started billowing out of it and suddenly it was ablaze. Not only was it a beautiful sight, but the flames kept the cold from finishing me off. I kind of wished I’d had a marshmallow to roast or something.


Mostly I’m happy that I was finally able to burn it as I’ve been intending to do for some time now. It had been hanging around my living room with a lampshade resting on its head. A ham that liked to party is what it looked like.

The day after we burned the ham I called Uffish to confirm a time for watching Scrubs, and the subject of ham burning came up. She had missed the event, and so demanded that I make her a second ham to burn. I asked if I could make the new ham smaller than the original, as it had been quite large. She consented, we hung up, and I immediately set to work making the second ham.


I delivered it to her an hour and a half later when we all met up at Optimistic.’s. It's hand puppet sized, and perhaps my favorite feature is that there’s a set of eyes you can move into place – modeled after my own pair of eyes – blue with black glasses around them. I’m immensely proud of how it turned out. Uffish has since demanded a third ham that she can actually burn, but at this I put my foot down. If I made a ham for everyone who wanted one (which turns out is quite a few people) I'd be in my room with a hot glue gun for days. What gets me is that it doesn't even really look like a ham. When I was wearing the original costume I had people ask me what I was supposed to be.

me:I'm the ham from To Kill A Mockingbird.

them:Oh.

me: Don't I look like a ham? I'm clearly labeled as being such.

Basically I would have been screwed if I hadn't painted the word HAM on the front of it in big white letters. Also, the rest of what I wrote in this post is incredibly outdated, seeing as how it happened two and a half weeks ago, but this is what it was at the time:

I’ve spent every day of this last week hanging out with incredibly cool people. To recap - two wedding receptions, iced cream, Big Fish, a birthday party, mafia, a lot of cake, the season premiere of 24, a lot of leftover cake, scum, Roman Holiday, homemade pizza, home videos of me when I had a raspy voice and hair like Chucky, Scrubs, Gigantic; a Tale of Two Johns, Happy Pirates practice, the LDS film festival 24 hour movie marathon, The Office, Scrubs again, and then the burning of the ham.

I handed out my ham, and then we all watched Scrubs and played Apples to Apples. A little before curfew most of us decided we were hungry, so when it was time to go we went to IHOP. I had a delicious Belgian waffle and some hashed browns. Highlights included discussing the Sanhedrin shuffle, making the syrups sing the manamanah song from The Muppets, and overhearing other tables’ conversations - I heard something about “the armpit of the world” that made me laugh. I wrote phone numbers on sugar packets, which is something I always do at restaurants for fun. For some SUGAR, call (801) 812 -5755. You get the idea.

Friday, February 02, 2007

Philosophy

I got up this morning and went to take a shower. Somebody didn't put that little tab down that switches the water from the shower head to the bathtub spout. Cold. Water. 6:30 am. Wet and dying. Cold water all over my head and shoulders. That woke me up a bit faster than usual. I'd meant to take a shower, but I prefer to be fully in the shower and not still in my pajamas when the dousing happens. After that I thought to myself, "I hate the world. Today sucks." Then a small smile played across my face, as I realized that there was no possible way for me to hate this day, no matter how terrible its course of events. Today is Groundhog Day.

Our family has the tradition of watching Groundhog Day every year. We drink root beer floats. We get up and dance during the credits to the weatherman song. I love this day. It's second only to Canada Day in my estimation. I love Phil. Both Phils. I love Ned and Larry. I love them all. I love hearing that ridiculous Sonny and Cher song over and over and over again, seeing Phil kill himself a lot (I wasn't just blown up yesterday), and the fact that I know the whole bit that plays on the radio each morning. "That's right woodchuck chuckers, it's...Groundhog Day!"