Whoa!

Well, guys, I know you will be surprised to hear this, but I'm sick. I know, I know. I am usually the pillar of health. But it's true. I have bronchitis. And it effing sucks.

Naturally my parents are convinced I have swine flu. I mean I will keep an eye out for it, but everyone knows I am like the last person to grab on to the latest fad. If I got swine flu now that would make me terribly in vogue, and let's be honest, that's just not me. It's more likely that I have SARS.

Speaking of SARS, when I went to Urgicare tonight, they made me put on a surgical mask since I was coughing. I have never worn a surgical mask before. They are extremely funny and extremely uncomfortable. As soon as I put it on, I was making SARS jokes in my head. Because as we just discussed, I am like 6 years behind. I quickly admonished myself for being so lame so instead, I started reenacting scenes from "Grey's Anatomy" in my head*. And sort of outside of my head.

When I left the office, I noticed there were a lot of people in the waiting room. So I left the mask on as I walked out to freak them out. I definitely saw some looks of horror. I am a bad person. That's probably why I've been stricken with bronchitis swine SARS.

While I've been home battling sickness, my sister has been in L.A. for work. Monday night, she and her coworkers happened upon the premier for "Old Dogs" which, by the way, looks terrible. Well, they ended up standing in the crowd watching the red carpet. They saw Jon Voigt, Seth Green, Breckin Meyer, Uncle Jessie's wife Becky from "Full House", Kelly Preston, John Travolta, Robin Williams, Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson. She said that Kelly Preston and Becky from "Full House" were otherworldly beautiful. Skinny and gorgeous and just ridiculous.

So after Diane saw some like actual major mega movie stars, she saw a commotion and ran over to see what it was about. And she ended up about 1 foot away from...are you ready?

Joey Lawrence!

Yes. The man. The legend. And here is one reason why I love my sister. Her reaction to all the major mega movie stars? Excitement. Some "Wow this is so cool" type statements. Her reaction to Joey Lawrence? "I LOVE YOU, JOEY LAWRENCE!!!!!" She completely lost her mind. And screamed that at him. From a foot away. He looked up and smiled at her. So now I'm pretty sure her life is complete. And I'm pretty sure mine has a hole in it that can only be filled by a look from Joey Lawrence.

I just want to say that 5 years ago I was in New York City for work, and my hotel was next to the premier of "Troy". So I went outside to see some Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston and get them to be best friends with me (seriously I bet I could've saved their marriage), but I was too late so all I saw was a lousy Olsen twin.

By the way, when I told my friend at work that my sister saw Joey Lawrence at a movie premier, he thought I meant that he was in the crowd with her watching the red carpet. Now that's effing funny.

*Um...how freaking awesome have the past few episodes of Grey's been? So awesome!

Halloween happenings

The week before Halloween was Suz and AJ's annual Halloween party. Every year they have a Halloween movie trivia quiz, and they give out prizes and everything. The past two years, I have won this trivia game. It has brought me much fame and glory and also angered all my friends to the point that when I won the Christmas movie trivia quiz at Brian and Anita's Christmas party last year, I was booed. So I had a lot to live up to this year. Luckily, I. Am. Awesome. That's right-3 years in a row!! As predicted, I was booed again. But I know it's all in good fun plus everyone can pretty much bite me. I also won second place in the best costume contest so I was given a bottle of Riesling that was in the shape of a black cat (this will be important coming up).

I was insanely sick the entire week after we got back from Vegas so I was entirely unprepared for the party. Three days before, it dawned on me that I did not have a costume. As usual when costume anxiety sets in, I began looking through every drawer and cabinet in my house praying for an idea to strike. What I found was one of those plastic hair bonnets that old ladies wear when it rains. My dad had given it to me a couple months ago. Obviously. Why wouldn't he.

Using the rain bonnet as inspiration, I went to the party dressed up as me. At age 90. Ugly blouse that had a clip on pearl necklace attached to it, ugly skirt, knee highs showing, slip-on tennis shoes, reading glasses on a chain, clip-on earrings, hair in a bun, plastic rain bonnet and ginormous bra on the outside of my shirt. Because I mean I figure I'll be one of those old ladies-you know so senile I wear my bra on the outside? The best part is that I bought the bra at the Salvation Army. Did you know they sell bras there? Just one word on that: ew. But yeah I got a huge old lady bra for like $2. I felt pretty cool purchasing it in front of people who probably later went home and told their families to be thankful for what they have and to not take for granted that they don't need to purchase used undergarments. Sadly I did not have to purchase the knee highs or slip-on tennis shoes. Those were mine, you guys. Parts of my 90 year old lady costume were things I owned. Sigh.

Notable quotes:

Me as I walked into the party: "I can't stay. I have a date."

All my guy friends: "I feel gross because I can't stop staring at your bra."

Suz: "You're keeping that outfit, right?"
Me: "Well I plan on having teenagers someday who need dropped off and picked up places. So yes."

My mom: "Cute. But weird."

My dad: "I'm so proud."

Note: My parents weren't at the party. My sister and I sent a picture to their cell phones. Hopefully they were with friends and had to show them the picture and then wordlessly shrug as their friends said things like, "Your daughter's 32, right? No boyfriend? Wow. That's shocking."

On actual Halloween night a big group of us went to Diane and Drew's to hand out candy and eat chili. It was really fun. Especially when Meg laid down in the front yard to demonstrate her P90X moves. She was rolling around covered in leaves then convinced Matt to lay down and do the moves with her. I'm pretty sure this made us the most terrifying house on the block. At one point Lisa had to say to some clearly nervous children, "We're not scary. We're just loud. I promise." After Diane's we went to Renee and Darren's to hang out, make fun of the candy they bought to hand out and play musical Catch Phrase. During several rounds of this game I came dangerously close to peeing my pants from laughing so hard. Matt was completely freaked out by my black cat bottle of Riesling so naturally I held it up to him and made it talk. He goes, "Get your black pussy out of my face." And then I laughed so hard I choked on my own saliva.




Good luck getting this image out of your head the rest of the day.

Update on my first couple weeks with King Nano

Number of songs: 1,771

Space free: 7.17 GB (God I love you King Nano)

#1 most played song so far: "Photograph" - Def Leppard (obviously)

#2 most played song: "Defying Gravity" - Original Cast Recording of "Wicked" (I am part gay man)

#3 most played song: "Fader" - The Temper Trap (everyone listen to The Temper Trap immediately)

Time I spent loading George Michael/Wham! songs onto it tonight: 1 hour

# of times I've listened to "Everything She Wants" by Wham! since I downloaded it: approximately 17

How awesome is that song on a scale of 1-10, 10 being most awesome: approximately 17

How much do I want to add an exclamation point to my name so I'm known as Sarah!: a really lot

# of Shia LaBeouf movies I watched today: 1 (Transformers 2)

# of times I changed the batteries in my smoke alarms and after testing them couldn't figure out how to get them to stop beeping: 4

# of Halloween decorations I own that I realized today contain a misspelling: 1 (Autumn Greetngs)

How much do I want to see the new Sandra Bullock movie, "The Blind Side": so effing much

How often do I cry when the preview for that movie is on: every time

When did I buy a ticket for "New Moon": last week

How old am I again: 32

When did this King Nano list go off the rails: Right around Wham!

Picture Pages!

I wanted to show you a picture of my new boyfriend. While taking his picture, I found some other pictures I would like to show you. They are, in a word, life changing. Okay in a words.

First my new boyfriend:










This is King Nano.










I know what you are thinking. What happened to my old boyfriend Lance Cpl Harold W. Dawson? Look it's nothing he did. It's just that he couldn't really give me everything I needed. I shouldn't talk bad about him. There is still a lot of love there. But he is moving on to Drew's sister, and I am moving on to King Nano who is 16Gb has video, FM radio and Cover Flow. Sigh...I love him.

Here is a picture of the pocket watch Steph bought for Europe:





See? It's a for real pocket watch.









Check out my train whistle:








Phallic much? The way it works is you just blow into that round tip and then it erupts with sound. Ahahahaha. Sorry, Dad.

A bar near us does these crab races on Wednesdays. If you want in, you pay a couple bucks and pick a number. Each crab in the race is numbered so the number you pick corresponds to that crab. Everyone stands around a big round table, and they dump the crabs in the middle. First crab to reach th edge of the table wins. It. Is. Awesome.

This is the starting point of the race. All the crabs are in the middle and will begin walking outward any minute. First one to cross that white line you see around the edge of the table is the winner.

We got to name our crabs. I named mine Herpes. In the picture below you can see just how competitive Herpes was:















Nice job, Herpes. I actually turned to Diane at this point and said, "I'm pretty sure my crab is dead." Other crabs were literally crawling on top of him and using him for leverage, and he wasn't even moving. Turns out he wasn't dead. Just slow. Like me. But not like herpes.

Lastly, here is a picture either Diane or Sharda took while hanging out the window of my car while we were driving on the highway on our way back from Miami University last year:

What is that, you ask? That, my friends, is a monstrosity. It's called the King of Kings statue, and it sits outside of Solid Rock Church in Monroe, Ohio. It's 62 feet high and cost a quarter of a million dollars to build. A quarter of a million dollars. And it's not even a water fountain. I'm sure there aren't any needy families or children in the area who could've used the church's donation of $250,000. THIS IS DISGUSTING, SOLID ROCK CHURCH! But damn-it is funny.

I do have a suggestion for improvement, though:

Aaaaaand cue lightning strike.

We're back!

If you followed my tweets you know that I was on a hot losing streak while in Vegas. I was also on another kind of streak: a drinking streak. I'm not kidding I think I was drunk for 3 days straight. Luckily I have it all on film. Check out these pictures:



Yeah there aren't any pictures. I took my camera with me everywhere and took no pictures. Let this be a lesson to you all: being drunk = forgetting to take pictures. Sometimes it = taking horrible pictures that you can't post anyway because you need to remain gainfully employed and on speaking terms with your family.

Actually I do have one picture. And I really can't post it because it's a picture of a stack of porno cards that John took from the porno hander-outers in Vegas and then stuffed in my purse when I wasn't paying attention. I found them 2 days later.

Some Vegas numbers for you:

People on the trip: 15
People on the trip who I love with all my heart: 14 (I'm excluding me here not because I don't like myself but it's super douchey to say you love yourself with all your heart)
Dollars lost: $270
Drinks drank: 30+?
Times Drew almost walked in on me naked: 1
Times I screamed "No" when Drew almost walked in on me naked: 16
Amazing steaks eaten: 1
Amazing steaks I'm still thinking about: 1
Times I tripped and fell on my ass by the pool: 1
Bruises I obtained as a result of that fall: 3
People who had stomach issues: 3
Times I played my favorite slot machine game ever, The Frog Prince: 900
Horrible toasts I made: 1
Times I had my champagne glass refilled for free at brunch on Sunday: possibly 17
Times I laughed so hard I almost peed my pants: lost count

I seriously need to hire someone to always be bringing me champagne. Like for real.

I was ready to go home Sunday afternoon to get away from the smoke and the losing of money. And now I am ready to go back. I'm not even kidding-who's in for a trip next year? Let's do this. I will show you the proper way to drink an absolutely ginormous plastic Eiffel Tower full of strawberry daiquiri and get so drunk in the afternoon that you pass out at 5:30pm and get up an hour and a half later ready to go again. Also you can see me in my giant sunhat. Renee said it makes me looks like J-lo, but I know it really makes me look like a grandma. I am okay with that. My varicose veins make me look like a grandma, too. You guys are gross. So are varicose veins.

Oh by the way, I've been meaning to tell you guys: 2 weeks ago I locked my keys in my car after pulling into the parking garage at work. Not just my keys. My cell phone, my work laptop, every single thing I needed. It was awesome. I mean I guess it's not as embarassing as locking myself in my car. But still. Anyway, John made a Top Ten countdown before Vegas of reasons why it was going to be awesome. I thought about posting it, but it's too inside jokey, and unless you know all the people going, wouldn't be fun reading for you. So I'll just show you #6:

6. Is it possible to lock yourself inside an airplane? A hotel room? Out of an airplane? Sarah is going to Vegas with us. We will have our answers soon enough.

Apparently this made everybody "laugh hysterically" ha ha ha. But you know I would just like to say that I did not lock myself out of anything this trip. Although I did kind of get stuck in the airplane bathroom on the way home, and a flight attendant-a good looking male flight attendant who earlier in the flight had had to stop and show me how to lift my armrest because I couldn't figure it out-had to push on the door from the outside to help me open it. So...yeah. Dammit. Whatever I hate you guys.

P.S. Our flight home had this service where you pay $6 on your credit card and you get to watch DirectTV-live happening now DirectTV-and movies that haven't been released yet for the whole flight! The screen is on the seat in front of you. I just want to say: this is hella awesome. Diane was all, "Whatever I'm not paying $6!" because apparently she can lose $200 gambling in Vegas and pay $15 for a drink by the pool but $6 for 4 hours of entertainment is careless spending. Me on the other hand? As soon as I realized what it was I was looking at, out came the credit card. Diane obviously came around a half hour later. Continental, please hear me: GREATEST IDEA EVER.

Holy crap it's Vegas Day!

I'm getting ready to go to the airport to leave for Vegas. Incidentally, I got up way earlier and with less fuss than I do for work. I had this whole post planned, but my Internet provider was down last night for "maintenance" so now we all lose. I'll post it when I get back because it's awesome.

My Blackberry won't let me post to my blog anymore (uncool!) so follow me on Twitter for Vegas updates. They will probably be really informative like, "Just drank 7 free vodka crans in 20 minutes. Damn the casino man!" and "Just puked. Don't remember eating that."

Have a great week, everyone!

Caliente Pocket!

When speaking to a crowd (do my parents and Steph count as a crowd?), you should try opening with a joke. So here goes:

What has two eyes, two arms, two legs, two ears and accidentally brought two coats to work on Friday? ME!

Wow that was a pretty effective joke. I can see everyone here is now loosening up, we're all kind of jiving and on the same page. Did I just say jiving? No seriously though I brought two coats to work on Friday. I wore one and after I hung it up at my desk, I realized I had also carried one in. Hey-you can't put a price on that kind of flakiness.

Okay this was a pretty solid opening. On to some announcements:

- Two very big announcements for our group: ALoyd and Sharda are engaged and will forever be joined as Shloyd. Also Gordo actually found someone patient enough to marry him! I kid, I kid, Gordo. Gordo and Tracey are also engaged. Fantastic news all around! Congratulations, you four! May I offer one suggestion? Double wedding!

- Giant Eagle just lowered the price on their rotisserie chicken to $4.99, and I can think of no reason why I shouldn't buy one of these every single day. My life is sad.

- You guys, for 10 years-10 YEARS-I have been sitting...hoping...patiently waiting for my time to come. For my friend to return to his rightful place in the sun. I'm sure by now you know I'm talking about my friend...Flannel. Flannel is back, baby. Take a look around you. IT'S BACK. You can't fight it so don't even try. Just embrace it. Love it. Take it into your arms and feel how soft and comfy it is. How it makes you want to snuggle up in front of a fire or drink hot chocolate with marshmallows or chop wood. I've wished for this for so long, and now it's finally here: Flannel. Is. Back. In. Style. Yay!! Thank you, fashion gods!

- Um...who watched "The Office"? Okay seriously-that episode was freaking amazing. The rehearsal dinner speeches made me so uncomfortable, I was literally hiding under my blanket. Then Andy's accident. Then the wedding. The greatest half hour of television ever! When they stopped the organist, and Dwight went up and pressed Play on the iPod, and I heard "Forever" start, this was my exact reaction: "This show is fucking brilliant." Then I laughed so hard my stomach hurt, and at the same time, I cried like a little girl. The Maid of the Mist scenes were beautiful. The whole thing was just perfect. Especially Michael's genuine emotional response to Pam and Jim actually getting married. It was only on the screen for maybe 3 seconds, but it was beautiful. If you missed it, go back and find it. It's really lovely. I love you forever, Office!

- Speaking of television, Flash Forward, anyone? I decided to record it "just in case", though, I was really expecting to watch one episode and let it go. Then the one episode decided to be THE MOST AWESOME EPISODE EVER! Dammit, Flash Forward. Why are you so good?

- The big news is that we are leaving for Las Vegas on Thursday! 2.5 days. I keep forgetting about it, though. And by that I mean that it's literally all I think about every second of every day for the past 3 weeks. John is going. For you old schoolers, you know him as Shop Dungarees and one of the funniest m-effers in the world. We are going to Vegas. Just the two of us. No I'm kidding, obviously, even though that's what he keeps telling people at work. That makes for a comfortable working environment. A big group of us are going including John and his wife Leah. The only problem with John going is that since we see each other every day, we talk about Vegas every day, and all it does is rile us all up for the trip and then we just become useless. Well, more useless than usual. We actually tried to play craps at my desk last week. Finally I was like, "We have a problem."

Between last week and the week prior, I had 3 Hot Pockets for lunches. On Friday, while I was eating my Lean Pocket, this conversation happened:

John: I'm concerned with the number of Hot Pockets you're eating this close to Vegas.
Keith: What do you mean?
Me: He wants me to be gambling with my money-not with my health.

We all laughed. Two hours later, I got a horrible stomachache that lasted for 2 days. Let this be a lesson to you all: Jim Gaffigan is right about Hot Pockets.

Still among the living

Sorry I have been MIA, but last week not a good week for me. Not only was I not home before 10pm any night of the week, but the weather is changing. The changing of the seasons-especially from warm to cold-always wreaks havoc on my head, and I spent the entire week with a migraine that had varying degrees of pain associated with it. It was pretty horrible. How about some random nonsense?

- I just found out that the first thing my grandpa said when he heard my sister had broken her nose was, "Well how's she goin' to pick her nose?" Awesome. I love my grandpa.

- It's possible I was so drunk at Meg's 30th birthday party Saturday that I yelled at Anderson Varejao as he was walking by me with his bodyguard on the way to the bathroom. I feel I should explain. Obviously I like Anderson Varejao as he is one of my beloved Cleveland Cavs. However, he used a bodyguard to walk through a crowd of roughly 10-12 people. What did he think was going to happen? In my defense, I don't think he heard me. And also the bar where we had Meg's party was awesome and amazing until about 11pm when it became a playground of douchebaggery, and it annoyed me. It annoyed all of us. Then Varejao walked by with his bodyguard, and I had just had enough. Sorry, Andy. I still really like you and your hair.

- Speaking of birthdays, yesterday was Steph's. We went to happy hour at Light Bistro where the manager instantly recognized Steph even though she's only been there twice before. We think it might have something to do with her/our volume. As Steph said last night, "We can turn any nice place into a keg party." Anyway, Steph is roughly 10 months younger than me. I turn 33 in December (shut up). Please do the math. So we were sitting at the bar, and Steph said something-I can't remember what-and this happened:

Manager/bartender: "Honey, you're thirty now. You need to act your age."

I slowly turned to look at Steph who was sipping on her drink, eyes down avoiding mine. "You told him you were thirty?"

Steph: "Sshhh! He doesn't need to know!"

Diane: "Steph! Hey, Ron, she's not thirty. Think higher."

We are mean friends.

P.S. Steph, Christy and Meg are back from Europe with awesome stories, but since this isn't their blog, I probably shouldn't repeat them here. I'm just happy they are home and had a wonderful time. But...I just need to tell you one thing: Steph held hands with someone. Steph...does not hold hands. She doesn't hug, she doesn't like touching. It's just not her. But she held hands with a boy. Anyway, it might not be obvious from this blog, but I am really weird about safety. Ever since my friend Matt died, I am a stickler for making sure my friends are being safe. It is annoying to everyone including me. But I can't help it. Matt's death changed me. So I heard some stories about some questionable things that happened in Europe (nothing illegal-we are not those kind of people), and I was yelling at Steph about it-right after she had told me about the hand holding. As I was yelling she goes, "Christy was bad, too!" So I said, "Okay let's go yell at Christy." And Christy turned to us and said, "What?" And Steph said, "We're yelling at you! You held hands with someone, too!" I had to stop, turn to Steph and whisper, "That's not actually what we're mad about. Holding hands is okay." She looked confused. I missed Steph.

I love my weekends

So I just realized that I have not been keeping you apprised of my weekends. And they have been super fun. So let's get it started with my last two weekends in August. Which were awesome.

Saturday, August 22 - So the day after Krusty's, we went to breakfast. At breakfast we were lamenting that we would have to wait a full year until we got to go to Krusty's again. Then it came up that we could probably recreate the event in Diane and Drew's backyard. Thus, Krusty's Redo was born. In retrospect, we probably should have called it Honorary Krusty's or Krusty's Part 2 because Krusty's Redo implies something was wrong the first time which required it to be redone. That was obviously not the case as Krusty's is the greatest day ever. In all of history. Anyway, we had a big cookout, invited all our friends and drank all day long. Steph had cups made (!) that said "Summer's the season for brew so it's Krusty's re-do!" I was obviously in charge of bringing the girly drinks since I am the core audience for those. However, I caught many people partaking of the girly Mike's Hard Lemonade drinks, and I just want to say: Quit pretending they aren't completely delicious, everyone! Because they are. Steph also made us all wear wristbands. It was how we "registered" (you have to wear a wristband at real Krusty's). In fact one of my favorite things of the whole day was when Steph would see someone without a wristband and take their drink away until they put one on.

I got to the party about an hour late (at 1:30pm). My sister was already drunk. I followed suit soon after, and that is how it went all day long. For everyone. We had a big beer pong tournament which turned everyone into a giant ahole. So much so that Paul, who had left with his 11 year old son earlier in the day to go to a Browns game, came back later in the day, saw what state we were in and immediately took his son home. Probably a good idea. Good parenting, Paul!

One thing that was different than Krusty's is that it rained all day long. We all surmised that we probably pissed off the Krusty's gods by trying to recreate the event. But hey, Krusty's gods, we did manage to make a little money to donate to the Malachi House. You have to forgive us now, right?

One thing that was the same as Krusty's is that we went to the bar afterward. Like we really needed to. While at the bar, not only did I have a stimulating conversation with my friends Mike and Fats about infomercials, but then Diane and I put money in the jukebox to pick out some songs. We had 1 pick left and obviously went with "The Chipmunks Christmas Song". As soon as we picked it, we walked over to Woody and Matt,and Diane said, "Yeah...we should probably head out now."

All in all, nothing beats original Krusty's (first weekend in August 2010-mark your calendars now!), but our homage to Krusty's was pretty damn fun. Oh and a sidenote: Steph held two babies and cooked food at Krusty's Redo. For those of you that know her, this is a big deal. Babies freak her out, and as for cooking...well let's just say that last year for Girls' Christmas she brought Chicken McNuggets. I think you see where I'm going here. And it's that any mention of Krusty's brings out the best in people.

Saturday, August 29 - Most of our friends were going to a wedding so Steph and I were the ones left without plans. We both decided we hadn't done a Choose Your Own Adventure Cleveland Day in a while so Steph came up with CYOA Cleveland Day: Recession Edition. All of the activities would be ones that were cheap or free-but still fun-so that our total expenditure for the day would not exceed $40 a person. See how Steph is sensitive to the economic crisis even in her event planning?

The adventure started at 3pm and went in 2 hour intervals. Here were our choices for the 3-5 timeframe (verbatim from Steph's agenda that she typed out):

1. Dragonboat festival – As Styx says, Come sail away, come sail away. Come sail away with me. I thought that they were angels, but to my surprise…Instead I found out about an awesome dragonboat festival. No lie! www.clevelanddragonboatfestival.com Free

2. Come on, Ride the Train…and ride it…Choo-Choo…Peninsula Depot leaves the station at 3pm. Want to climb aboard and ride the Cuyahoga Valley train. $15.

3. Come on Get happy! The flying Fig can make this happen with their Saturday $5 Happy Hour special. We’ll also cruise the West Side Market.

Well I have wanted to go on the Cuyahoga Valley train for some time. I've never been on a real train ride before, and I thought it would be a super cool 45 minutes to an hour ride. Steph agreed because in her mind we were going out during the Great Depression, and she pictured us carrying knapsacks and "riding the rails" for free by hopping into a passing freight car like they did back in the day. Steph has an active imagination. So we got to the train station, and we bought our tickets. We said, "We would like 2 tickets for the 3:40pm train." The lady said, "Okay that's $30. It leaves at 4:05." Already I was like why the hell do they call it the 3:40 train if it doesn't leave till 4:05? The lady clearly sensed my confusion and said, "The train arrives here at 3:40." as if that makes it make sense. If a train leaves at 4:05 it should be called the 4:05 train! Period. Anyway, I decided to let this go. Steph handed over her credit card to pay for the tickets. As she was signing the credit card receipt she casually asked, "How long is the train ride?" The lady goes, "3 hours." Steph and I completely froze and looked at each other in horror. THREE HOURS!? I'm not joking when I said I thought it would be 45 minutes. After a few seconds, it became clear to me that Steph had been shocked into silence, and it was getting awkward because no one was talking, and Steph had stopped signing the receipt. "Oh okay cool," I finally said, and we walked out of the little ticket booth. Then we sat down on the bench and started laughing hysterically.

At this point, Steph and I were a little panicky about what we were going to do on a train for 3 hours. So she got up and went back to the ticket lady and said, "So what is there to do on the train? Is there food or anything?" And the lady looked up at her, paused for a moment then said, "There's beer and wine on the train." Because she knew, you guys. She knew. Steph ran back out to me, and we went through our wallets to see how much cash we had. $25 between the both of us. We quickly did some math and decided $25 would not be enough for the two of us on a 3 hour train ride. So what did we do? What any normal person would do. We left the train station, went to a movie theater across the street that had an ATM and took out more cash. A lot more cash. Before our recession adventure day had even begun, we had already blown the budget.

When we went to get on the train, we didn't know where to go so we saw a guy who was dressed up in the traditional train conductor gear and went up to him. He told us we were in the right place, and then Steph said, "Can you say 'All Aboard'?" And he TOTALLY DID! It was amazing! Then we walked up to two other train workers-a man and a woman-who were right by the door and said, "Are we in the right place?" The man, who I'll call Our Friend, took one look at us and said, "First time on a train?" Awesome. Once we were inside the car, Our Friend came over to show us how these little headphone things worked. If you wore them during the train ride, they recounted the area's history and fun facts and stuff. We immediately and excitedly put them on, and then he said, "Girls, it hasn't started yet."

A few minutes later, the ticket lady came up and we showed her our ticket. Steph said, "Is there where you need to punch our ticket?" And she said, "No we don't really do that. We just count heads." Simultaneously, I made a sad face and Steph said, "Can you please punch it?" The ticket lady laughed and then totally punched our ticket. Then she said, "Girls, there's beer and wine up in that next refreshment car." Is it that obvious that we need alcohol wherever we go? Yes. It is.

We wasted no time in going to the refreshment car. Then we wasted no time in getting drunk on the train. You had to drink the alcohol in the dining car so guess who spent the entire train ride in the dining car? It ended up being the best place anyway because that's where all the train workers hung out. And by train workers I mean they are all volunteers. Most of them are retired men. Retired men love us. Not in a creepy way. In a we remind them of their daughters so they want to talk to us and take care of us way. Our Friend was in there, and he really loved us. He was like, "So did you girls just wake up today and say, 'Let's go on a train ride.'?" And we were like, "Yeah pretty much." And he said, "Yeah I can tell that's the kind of girls you are. That's terrific." Then he proceeded to tell us about all the best train rides available to us in the US. Awesome. Eventually Our Friend had to leave because his work day was over so he came up, handed us each a Kleenex and said, "Ladies, I have some bad news. I'm getting off at this stop. The tissue is for when the tears come. And they will come." Dad, can you please be friends with this guy!? I want to hang out with him!! Oh another anecdote about this guy: Steph and I bought train whistles from the gift shop (I'll post a picture tomorrow). Our Friend saw us with them and said, "Aw-just like the little kids." By the way, I am obsessed with my train whistle. I literally blow it all the time (you guys are gross). Mostly when people call me to be funny and annoy them and ensure they don't call me ever again.

We also made friends with the young guy and girl who worked in the refreshment car. Obviously. Because we were buying drinks (and candy and toys) from them every 10 minutes. We told them they were our best friends, and when the girl had to leave she came up and said, "I have to get off at this stop. But it doesn't mean we aren't still friends." I am officially in love with everyone on that train.

After Our Friend and our beer girl friend left, we were sad. But then the train conductor showed up, and he loved us, too. He told us all these train stories and stories about the area and about his kids and his friends and how he met his wife. Steph and I were so happy. So happy that somehow we ended up volunteering to work on The Polar Express train they do during Christmastime. Look I don't know how it happened, but suddenly Steph was saying she wanted to be an elf on the train,and I said I was too tall to be an elf so maybe I could be something else then we were given volunteer forms. It was all very fast, and I looked at Steph and said, "Wait do we work here now? What just happened?"

When we got close to our last stop where we got off, the young guy who worked the register at the refreshment car just came and sat down with us. But not after giving us free popcorn. He is in a band, and we are going to keep an eye out for them. I just need to remember what they're called. When we got off the train everyone who worked there said, "Ladies, we really hope you'll come see us again." And Steph was like, "Well you'll see us in December when we are elves." Then we got off the train, and there was a person standing outside it dressed in a chicken suit holding a bunch of balloons. Talking to no one. He/she was just standing there.

Sigh...

I LOVE THE F*CKING TRAIN!

I forgot how much I missed TV

Oh happy day, TV is back! The opening sequence of The Office where Michael, Dwight and Andy are running around knocking everything over and screaming "PARKOUR!" made me pee and it's exactly why I love this show. A few more choice reasons why:

- Creed freaking out because if a rumor gets out that he has asthma then he won't be able to scuba and if he can't scuba then what has he been working toward his whole life.

- The interview with the interns at the end each saying what they learned. "Well, I guess I learned nothing then."

- Andy, pleading: "Michael…am I gay?" I love you, Ed Helms.

- And my favorite line of the entire show which belongs to Oscar: "Is it really my job to comfort insecure heterosexual men? Does that really fall to me?"

Please tell me you guys watched Community. After one episode I am convinced it is and will be the best new show of 2009 and possibly my new favorite show. Holy crap I laughed hysterically from the minute it started. The writing is perfect (there are way too many amazing one liners to write them all down, for example "You seem pretty smart, you got a sport coat"), the cast is perfect, Joel McHale is perfect, and I cannot even begin to express how happy I am that Chevy Chase is on my TV again. Did you see how he introduced everyone in the study group? And when Joel McHale told everyone to look to the person to their left, he did a quick glance down at his hands to figure out which way that was. If you blinked you missed it, and it's all so classic Chevy Chase and so exactly why the man is a genius. I am elated to get to see him every week. Plus, they ended the show with a remake of "Don't You (Forget About Me)" and dedicated it to John Hughes. Perfect.

Only like 17 more months until Lost comes back.