Just Because

My niece, Savannah

6 months

Rainy Day Flowers

Today, after awakening to a complete downpour outside, decided to walk to work anyway. It took about twice as long once my flip flops were inundated with water, causing me to slip and slide like an idiot, but it really wasn't that bad. I did have to stop and wait under a tree at one point, as the water came down in sheets.

By eleven o'clock, the skies had cleared, the sun came out, and it was a gorgeous, warm spring day.

By 4:45, it was pouring again.

Jerk ass Mother Nature must have thought this was pretty funny, making us working types sit inside during the good, lovely sunshiney weather and force us to deal with the torrential rain once we finally escaped from our dungeons.

As I began my long walk home, I spotted a gorgeous flower, enjoying the rain. Then I saw another. And another!

And these are the moments for which I am glad I carry my camera around:

I like how everything is in focus except for the one in the foreground.

So I guess it wasn't such a bad day after all.

Why?

Look at all of the lovely drinking containers, lined up in a nice row.

You might be thinking to yourself, "Wow, that's a cool looking Nalgene-type bottle. I wish I had one of those for myself. But... huh. Hrmm. What... are those little things to the left?"

If you're thinking that they might be a form of feminine product, you're right.

This next picture is one I took after turning 90 degrees to my left.

Hi, I'm a bathroom.
Leave your dishes here, please.

Why? WHY?

Why would you keep your drinking vessel in the PUBLIC RESTROOM? I just don't understand the logic here.

And you know? What is it about me and bathrooms?

Steel Droplets of Sadness

I like movies.

Movies - well, good movies - have the ability to whisk you away and into a new, different world. And if not an alien world (because, let's face it - if we continue to allow George Lucas to make Star Wars films, eventually there will be a point of no return. And that point? A movie starring Jar Jar Binks. Oh, you don't think that it could happen? THE MAN CREATED THE WORST, MOST ANNOYING CHARACTER EVER TO GRACE THE SCREEN, AND WHEN SPIELBURG GETS WIND OF IT, THEY WILL SOMEHOW GET IT GREENLIT BECAUSE STUDIOS THINK THEY ARE BOX OFFICE MAGIC), then one similar enough to our own to be interesting. But not so similar that it's unsettling.

The other night, I had a plethora of films to choose from for my viewing pleasure. They all started at eight o'clock. Several came close to sparking my interest, some I'd seen, and others I owned on DVD.

And isn't that the dilemma? The age-old problem? If Matthew Broderick is all up on my screen in that sweater vest, I'll watch Ferris Bueller. Yeah, I'll watch his Day Off like I've never seen it before. I'll put down the remote no matter how far along it is - whether he's faking out his parents or leading a parade float down a Chicago street. I'll watch it even though I own it on both DVD and VHS.

(I still have a VCR. There, I said it. I haven't gotten around to replacing such classics as National Lampoon's Vacation ["The Wagon Queen Family Truckster. You think you hate it now, but wait till you drive it."] and Girls Just Want to Have Fun - starring a not-yet-so-horsey Sarah Jessica Parker, and I don't want to live in a world where I can't watch family road trips or sequined dance-offs at the drop of a hat.)

This particular night, however, there was a movie on TNT that I'd yet to see and always wanted to watch versus Clueless on Bravo. Normally, as I own Clueless, I would have flipped to Bravo and Alicia Silverstone. She's cute, she's funny, the late 90s fashion is so deliciously entertaining, and Paul Rudd. Yes, normally I would have switched to Bravo to make googly eyes at Paul Rudd, but apparently my brain took over.

And that, my friends, is the story of how I watched Steel Magnolias.

Sweet, merciful Jesus Christ in Heaven. What were the filmmakers TRYING TO DO? By the end, the heartbreaking, wrenching, I-must-be-masochistic end, I was blubbering like a little bitch.

This film ranks third on my all-time tearjerkers list. First? Titanic. I HYPERVENTILATED in the theater on that half day of school during my senior year. People were genuinely concerned for my lung capacity. Someone even offered to get me a paper bag. The second? Love Story. If you've seen it, well, you know. If not, well... Love means never having to say you're sorry for getting snot all over the couch from the heaving sobs.

Steel Magnolias, though. Hot damn. I'd always heard that it was "a bit" of a tearjerker, but I'd never heard that it was so damn laugh-out-loud funny! Shirley MacLaine delivered lines that made me guffaw so abruptly that I'm convinced the people across the street heard me (impressive, as their house is painted so loudly looks like it belongs on the Candyland gameboard and someone there has a drumset). I mean, her character's name was pronounced "Weezer," for crying out loud.

(It was spelled "Ouiser" for those keeping track.)

The premise of the film isn't that confusing: Louisiana ladies congregate at a beauty parlor, their lives entwined by marriage and small town roots. One is getting married, and has a colorful relationship with her mother due to her health issues, and I found this relationship to be the centerpiece of the entire film. They were snarky broads and extremely off-color and it was grand.

It's super sad and extremely predictable, but that's okay. It's meant to be a tearjerking nightmare of a chick flick, and any man forced to sit through it has my sympathy. Sure, Tom Skerritt has a role, and he's Viper for crying out loud, so he might save a few minutes for the guys, but really? It's the ultimate chick flick.

Right, so, Magnolias: sad and hilarious. Make the masochistic decision to watch it today!

Reason to Love Ann Arbor #2

The nerds.

Seventy-five Cent Summer

So I have this new car now.

Okay, I've had it since February, but I couldn't bear to take pictures of my darling in awful weather. She deserves a perfect setting.

Anyway, I love my little car. I love walking home from work, turning the corner onto my street, and seeing my adorable little car smiling at me.

Hi!

When I lived in DC, a car was simply not necessary, what with the public transportation and walkable grocery stores (though I must admit - I'm playing it fast and loose when it comes to my definition of "grocery store"). Aware of this, I drove my beloved 'Scort back to Michigan in the spring of 2005, which led to the ill-fated weekend of my first niece's baby shower and six stitches in my skull.

I became accustomed to living without a car. Sometimes I wished I could just get the hell out of the city for a while, but there were always rentals.

I also got used to not having to pay for gas. Or insurance. Lord.

When I was in high school, life was easier (man, was it easier). Summers were like a completely different dimension. Kelly and I worked for a friend's aunt, the assistant manager of a Michigan title company. This particular company owned a warehouse in Milford, a good hour drive from our hometown. The Warehouse housed the old, musty, archived files, and not much else. We worked a bizarre 7 am - 3 pm schedule, which meant that we would leave for work at 6 in the morning. We were there to organize the warehouse and pull any needed files for Dick, a sweet, mustachioed, cigarette-auraed man, to come collect. If he arrived early, we would leave early.

It was lovely.

It was lovely and cushy, and we were lucky. For two soon-to-be high school seniors in the summer of 1997, making ten dollars an hour was a pretty good deal. Especially when you consider how much work we actually did.

Or, didn't do, rather.

We would arrive at the warehouse, a nondescript building in the middle of a rather random lumber yard, around 7 a.m. We'd stop at Speedway or McDonald's for breakfast and we'd listen to Detroit's Drew & Mike morning radio show (now "Mike in the Morning" without a retired Drew).

After a while, we had a pretty set routine:

7 ~ Arrive at warehouse
7-10:30 ~ Listen to Drew & Mike until they went off the air
10:30-12 ~ Play "dots," write retarded stories, nap
12-1 ~ Lunch, usually at Subway, with which we were obsessed for years
1-1:45 ~ Arrive at satellite title company to receive fax of files to be pulled
1:45-2 ~ Go to Kroger for pop
2-3 ~ Wait for Dick to arrive to collect files
3 ~ Leave for home

It all went downhill the day we brought in sleeping bags and pillows and slept on the shelves.

Really, we did.

And we got paid for this.

We would take turns driving - even at seventy-five cents a gallon, we were still just high school students. Me in my 1996 Escort, her in her 1985 almost-good-as-new Topaz (affectionately named "Klancy"). The days she drove were usually more entertaining. Merging onto I-75 was usually a brush with death because there was almost always a massive semi barreling up behind us in the right lane, laying on the horn, unable to switch lanes. Y'all, Klancy couldn't outrun a big rig, even when driving through Detroit, where the speed limit would inconceivably drop to 55 miles per hour. So, every other day we'd fire up Klancy and find ourselves in the middle of a situation comedy - turning around slowly, spying the semi, and screaming in unison.

That summer was a blast. I was home from work by 4 p.m. and then I'd head to the pool or the park or anywhere else. I'll never forget the day that gas dropped to $.75 per gallon. Seventy-five CENTS. We cruised the main roads, as everyone did, though the 'Scort and Klancy weren't all that awe-inducing. But we didn't care. It was summer, we were seniors, and we owned the world.

As far as I remember, the price per gallon hovered around one dollar for the entire summer.

Now? I still walk everywhere I can, and as much as possible. I suppose that I could drive the two miles to work, but I refuse to pay $1.10 an hour to park. I'll walk it. The gas prices aren't affecting me that much, and I'm lucky to get good gas mileage. But I still have to pay!

It's summer again, and it's been over ten years since that glorious high school summer. My life might not be as carefree as it once was, but I suppose that's part of growing up. Living in DC changed me, though. I don't think that walking to work would have been conceivable to me in 1997. I would have thought that it was too far, too hot, too time-consuming... Now I feel guilty for driving, for wasting gas and for blowing money on parking.

I mean, there's always the bus.

Chicken and Brown Rice

This recipe is a bit of a cheat, but I DON'T CARE. It's awesome and I've had it twice this week already. ENJOY.

1 small rotisserie chicken from the market, regular flavor
short grain brown rice
1/4 red onion, chopped finely
fresh cilantro, chopped roughly
1/4 cup toasted pine nuts
1/2 pint grape tomatoes, quartered
1/4 lime

Buy the chicken anytime, but try and deal with it as soon as you return home. It'll be much easier to remove the skin while it's still warm.

Remove the skin from the chicken and discard. Or, place in a pile and eat while cooking your healthy meal. It's fun to be ironic.

Once skinned, dismember Ms. Chicken. First, remove the dark meat from the bones of the legs, wings, and thighs and shred apart using two forks. Next, cut away the white meat from the breast bone. Shred one breast and add to the dark meat (there will be much more than you think), setting aside the other to slice for sandwiches (or shred the whole damn thing. I don't care what you do!).

If you're using regular short-grain brown rice, it'll take about an hour to cook. It's EXCELLENT, and well worth the wait, but if you're impatient/starving, I recommend the "Fully Cooked Organic Brown Rice" bowls from Trader Joe's. They cook in the microwave in only 90 seconds. They're BRILLIANT, and almost as good as waiting an hour for the bagged rice.

Anyway, cook your rice up all pretty like.

Meanwhile, chop the onions, cilantro, and grape tomatoes. Toast the pine nuts in a small pan over medium heat, but keep an eye on them - they burn very quickly when, instead of paying attention, you're texting your cute boyfriend or washing that knife. I'm just saying.

Mix all ingredients together and squeeze the lime over top. You shouldn't need any salt, as the chicken will have some, but you could add pepper of you'd so prefer.

Now that I think about it, garlic would be good in here, too...

One Year Already?

On June 9, 2007, Merrick made Gerald an honest man.
I was on hand in a floaty dress to take pictures.
And cry, of course.

Congratulations, Merrick and Gerald!

The Heroic Adventures of Sammy the Sauropod

At the La Brea TAR PITS...

Donny the Dimetrodon is not impressed with Tony's offer...

"Why would we want to join your sad little gang?
You losers strut around like you own the Pits."

Tony, arrogant as ever, never skipped a beat:
"Not you, loser - you're not even a dinosaur!
And we don't take too kindly to your kind."

Albert "The Ace" weighed in:

"Dudes........ you know, be........ dudes."

"Uhhh..."

"Right. Well you know the code.
If you turn down my offer, we fight... to the death."

Albert the Ace wanted no part of this.
Like most Anklyosaurs, he was a staunch pacifist.
But before he could speak his mind, Donny the D
took matters into his own hands - by spiking Tony on the claw.

(Which, come to think of it, didn't really matter as his arms
were pretty much useless.)

But Tony was actually a huge puss when it came to minor pain.
Now he was pissed.

When he attempted a bite of Donny's sail, Donny,
very fleet of foot, tripped him. Tony fell backwards
into the TAR PIT.

As he dangled over the edge of the TAR PIT,
the end looked near for Tony the T.

All of a sudden, Sammy fearlessly leapt into action,
moving faster than any had ever witnessed!

"AAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHH!"

Sammy launched himself upon Donny the D,
and a quick flick of his tail sent Donny hurtling
into the deepest, darkest, no-way-out-of-est
section of the deadly TAR PITS, thus saving
Tony the T's reptilian ass.

"Gurgle... bleegggggggghhhhh... GAH!"

Yeah.
He was dead.

This selfless act of heroism shocked the gang:

Stan: "Wow, Sammy! That was awesome!"

Troy: "Where'd you learn those sweet moves?"

"Been practicing. No big whoop."

"Dudes."

"Thanks, Sammy. You're the best. I'm so lucky you were here.
Can I buy you a pterodactyl burger?"

"All I want is to be your friend. And maybe quit calling me fat."

Stan: "Yeah but it takes you six hours to climb up the hill."

Troy: "And you always finish our candy when
we're not paying attention."

"SHUT UP! I'M BIG-BONED!"

"Sigh..."

She'll Be the Coolest Toddler on the Block

Oh my gosh, NO I DIDN'T.

Yes. I did.

Look at them!
My sweet niece's first pair of Converse.

(Oh, and P.S.? No jokes about how those shoes would fit me. I've tried. I need a few sizes up.)